


The Ghosts of Summer

by iberiandoctor (jehane)



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Javert Survives, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Ghosts, M/M, Mystery Stories, Police Procedural, Post-Seine, Redemption, ToT: Monster Mash, casefic, redemption arc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-30
Updated: 2017-08-25
Packaged: 2018-08-27 20:35:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 27,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8415811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jehane/pseuds/iberiandoctor
Summary: Inspector Javert had been hearing the noises all summer: creaking, clanking, and then a steady drip-drip-drip.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [The_Plaid_Slytherin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Plaid_Slytherin/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspector Javert has been hearing things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to esteven for the beta!
> 
> The_Plaid_Slytherin: This treat is actually a small part of a wider story that I didn't have the bandwidth to make in its entirety before Halloween -- hope you enjoy, anyway! The post-canon reset, the learning from each other, the being-forced-to-work-together and changes in their feelings and perspectives, are all things that endlessly fascinate me too, and I tried to work them into _something seasonal/Halloweeny, a spooky-old-anything-that-might-be-haunted ghost story_ and mystery for Javert to solve.

Inspector Javert had been hearing the noises all summer: creaking, clanking, and then a steady drip-drip-drip. 

It was difficult to pin-point when he had first started hearing the wretched sounds. It was definitely after the June night Jean Valjean had rescued him from the barricades at the Chanvrerie and asked to be arrested, and Javert had refused in a cataclysm that he still hardly understood himself. Maybe a month or so after, when the investigations into the insurgents who had survived had started in earnest, and like every officer in the Prefecture of Police in Paris, he had been so busy he had not immediately noticed the strange sounds intermittently but persistently following him around.

The sounds manifested at inopportune times -- when he was working late in his new offices at the Prefecture, when he was patrolling the streets of the Île de la Cité -- and most often when he was alone in his rooms at the Rue des Vertus, after he had blown out the candle and as he was lying in the dark, waiting to be claimed by sleep.

Nothing frightened the irreproachable Inspector Javert, not even the dizzying realisation that his life's work had been wasted, not the temptation to resign from that life rather than make an impossible choice, nor choosing anyway, and the back-breaking work of having to rebuild a new life under the watchful eye of his newly acknowledged superior. A little untoward clanking and dripping in the dead of night would certainly not be feared by comparison. 

It was, however, a mystery, and it annoyed Javert to no end.

Finally, as summer became autumn, he could no longer tolerate the sound. He stamped out of his rooms and accosted his new assistant in the antechamber outside the Special Commissaire's office. "Do you hear that?" he demanded.

"Hear what, Monsieur?" the youngster stammered. 

"That accursed clanging, of course. No?" 

Marcel shook his head, and Javert sighed. M. Gisquet had on several occasions assured him that his, Javert's, promotion had been well-deserved, and his frank recommendations for improvements to the service were precisely what a great civilisation required, but Javert rather suspected that the new desk job and this hapless second-in-command were in fact intended by the Prefect as punishment, or at least an attempt at emasculation. 

Javert knew he would never have questioned M. Gisquet's motives before the summer when his superior had sent him to the barricades. He later realised the Prefect had intended him to be captured and to cover himself in glory by dying or escaping. He was less perturbed by the betrayal than he had expected; he'd always known, at least in the abstract, that politics was a morally ambiguous business. He supposed he should be grateful that he had been given this second chance to serve the right authority and to prove himself worthy to his Great Superior. 

To this end, Javert knew was required to atone for thirty years of blindness. Auditory hallucinations would be a small price to pay for that opportunity. Perhaps the rebels had hit him harder than he had at first thought and had left him with a permanent disability. No matter -- it was a cross he would learn to shoulder. 

Marcel ventured: "Maybe it's the floorboards. Your office was recently refurbished, your predecessor thought the wooden flooring was more modern..."

"It's not the floorboards," muttered Javert, but had the Prefecture staff investigate anyway. They discovered nothing untoward, and Javert was not surprised.

 

*

 

Over the autumn weeks that followed, the clanging became a familiar accompaniment to the sound of Javert's boot-heels on the cobblestones as he patrolled the Île de la Cité. 

As far as M. Vidocq was concerned, the desk job which M. Gisquet had assigned to Javert was just window dressing for the Special Commissaire's real mission -- which was to ensure the organised crime elements in the Seine region did not capitalise on the popular uprising to destabilise the state. M. Vidocq had wanted Javert for the Sûreté for some time; he had even sent one of his agents to accost Javert outside the station-house at Rue de Pontoise right before the cholera outbreak in the spring. 

Javert had then stoutly refused, but after the events of the barricade he had, in a night of agonising self-interrogation, concluded that the shades of grey of his new morality might be best served under a superior whose entire department was morally questionable. 

"Do you hear that?" he asked the street urchin, who had not recognised him in his new undercover attire and had tried to pick his pocket. "The clanging noise, the sound of dripping ...."

The youngster squirmed in his grasp. "Couldn't say, Inspector. 'S possibly my empty stomach you hear? Patron-Minette's gone to ground since your boys nicked most of 'em, nobody's running their turf no more, 's very bad for business."

"For the love of ... Very well." Javert pulled a card out of his pocket. "This is the address of M. Lafitte, a gentleman who operates a transport business. He will give you honest work, no more running errands for gangs. And if you hear that Thénardier has resurfaced, send word to M. Leblanc at No. 55 Rue des Vertus."

The youngster's face brightened, and fell again. Prodded by his new superior, Javert sighed and reached into his other pocket. 

"Take this. Get yourself something to eat. And mind what I said, there's more where that came from if you show me you've truly changed your ways."

The urchin swallowed, pocketing the coin. "Are you sure it's really you, Inspector?"

Javert tilted his head to one side to see if it helped tune out the clanging. "Apparently so."

 

*

 

For some reason, Javert did not hear the strange noises when he was in the company of that former convict and his benefactor, Jean Valjean.

Javert needed no further reason to spend time with the man. Valjean had provided compelling preliminary evidence that men could change, and Inspector Javert had undertaken the duty of ascertaining the proof of that for himself. In the eyes of the law, the infamous Jean Valjean had drowned in Toulon, and a 1823 death certificate had recorded his accidental demise. The man who had lived quietly for ten years under the name of Ultime Fauchelevent was now placed on probation, under the authority of the Sûreté's Special Commissioner; in the same way as Javert, that fledgling penitent, had been placed on probation under God. 

Accordingly, they spent their enforced mutual parole on afternoons when Javert's duties ended early, and in church on Sundays, praying before God and then discussing the nature of redemption. 

Javert had begun his inquiries by taking the man to the scenes of mutual interest, particularly those where Valjean had long-ago evaded Javert's snares: the Austerlitz bridge and Rue de Pontoise, the Gorbeau House, and the Petit-Picpus convent. In Javert's company, Valjean hadn't tried to run or stolen anything; instead he described how he had evaded police capture in straightforward terms. He'd also handed money to the hungry-looking family who lived in the ground floor apartment when he thought Javert might not be looking. The sisters at the convent had given their former gardener a glowing account of his years spent within their walls. 

Over the months of probation and investigation, Javert had to concede that Valjean's asserted cover story as a redeemed man did seem to have the ring of veracity.

Which was why Javert was taken aback to hear those familiar, dreaded sounds on the afternoon's visit to the Rue de la Chanvrerie. It was very faint: creaking, a dragging noise, and then the familiar drip. 

He stifled a groan and looked at the placid, white-haired man at his side. They had been walking through the damaged streets in silence, and had come to rest in the blasted-out shell of the wine shop the Corinthe, which had recently been condemned by the municipal authorities and was slated to be torn down in due course.

"I don't hear anything, Inspector," Valjean said, when Javert enquired, "and my hearing is still quite good, for an old man."

"Nonsense," Javert muttered, glancing around to see if the noises could be coming from leaking pipes or creaking brickwork. "You are hardly old. Jean Valjean's age is a matter of public record, and Ultime Fauchelevent's papers say he is fifty-two, the same age as I am."

He turned from the masonry to glare at Valjean. The man's deep chest stretched the fabric of his jacket and waistcoat, the powerful shoulders as wide across as Jean-le-Cric's had been in Toulon. Under the thick white hair, his broad face bore the countenance of a much younger man, as if virtue was proof against ageing. 

Javert's attention was riveted despite himself; he murmured, "I know how hale you still are. If I didn't know better I would suspect you of pretence, rather than modesty."

Valjean looked perplexed and then wounded. "I have never pretended to be weak just to take advantage," he said. The hurt, hunted look that he had worn in the early days of their enforced probation flashed in his eyes again, and Javert had to look away. Once such a look might have given him pleasure, but no longer.

"That is true," the Inspector said after a while. The Great Superior might have prompted an apology, but Javert had not yet travelled so far from his old self as to be able to choke one out.

Valjean cleared his throat. His expression had softened as if he understood Javert's struggle; it was likely that even the most saintly probationers faced the same desperate battle between their old sinful habits and the new moral code. He said, hesitantly, "What do the noises sound like?"

Javert frowned and made an effort to pay attention to the noises that now seemed muffled by the walls of the wine shop. It was not easy to concentrate. The autumn's chill did nothing to cut through the memories of the oppressive summer heat in these closed, stifling rooms, of the chafing rope about his throat and body, of his life in the hands of those desperate young men.

Perhaps this was the true genesis of the noises -- that they only existed in his imagination?

"There is a creaking," he said, slowly, "like that made when a window that has been shut for a long time is finally opened, like the protesting bones of an old man or woman climbing slowly up onto a stool."

"Then, a metallic clanging noise. The heavy door of a cell, perhaps, or chains." Javert was aware that Valjean was intimately familiar with these sounds; he did not have to look up to know that the hunted look had returned to that man's face.

Awkwardly, he said, "Finally there is a steady but uneven dripping. Wet laundry hanging on a line, a rusty tap not fully turned, spring rain leaking through a badly-patched roof onto the floor."

As one they both directed their eyes to the scarred ceiling of the wine shop, but it had been an unseasonally dry autumn.

"You hear the noises when you are alone?" Valjean asked. "I wonder if your apartment is in good repair."

Javert said, impatiently, "You can come inspect it if you like. The ceiling is in order, the windows do not creak. We do not have running water so there are no taps to fall into disuse."

"It seems we should investigate that possibility, at least," Valjean said humbly. "You say you hear the sounds in the company of others, also?"

"I do." Javert frowned. "And they say they cannot hear it. Even you, Valjean, and you say your hearing is good. Which means ..."

He fell silent. He knew where the evidence was leading. It meant either that he was losing his mind -- or that the creaking was the opening of the Corinthe windows in summer, the clanging was from the firearms that had been deployed on that fateful day, the drip-drip-drip the blood of those doomed boys that had fallen here in their fight for a better world.

Of course modern evidence weighed against the existence of ghosts. But did not a belief in God similarly indicate the existence of an unseen spirit realm beyond their physical world?

"Javert," said Valjean, and put his hand on Javert's arm. Slowly, Javert realised the man was trying to comfort him. A month or two ago, he would have shaken off Valjean's grip -- a police inspector needed no help from a convict and probationer -- and he was astounded to discover that the warm clasp was indeed comforting.

"I do not think you are unwell," Valjean said gently. "You seem in your right mind... at least, you are as you have always been. Which means you might be experiencing some form of minor haunting. I do not believe that to be entirely unexpected, given the violence that occurred here this summer."

Javert waited until he could be sure his voice was steady. "I would sooner believe that I was suffering from a mental break. I have no experience whatsoever with ghosts."

Valjean squeezed his arm. "Nor I," he said, "but I would imagine those poor boys have no one left alive to haunt save for you and me. And Marius, although I believe he already carries enough guilt for nine dead souls."

Javert bowed his head. Night was falling around them, and the noises fell silent with it. The only sound in the bullet-ridden shop was that of the two men's breathing; Valjean now stood close enough that Javert could almost hear the urgent beat of that great heart that was still and fully alive, alive, alive. 

After a while, Valjean said, "Let me see if I can help. Perhaps Fr. Michel at the Eglise Saint-Sulpice will know how to exorcise these ghosts."

"I doubt it," Javert said. He realised Valjean had addressed him by his name, and further, that he did not mind. 

It was very quiet. The sounds, and now their absence, seemed rife with regret. Javert frowned: for all their various failings, he did not think the young insurgents had died regretfully -- they'd fallen in a fierce blaze, fighting for what they had believed in; they'd died together, hand in hand. It was those who were left who might still spend their days and lives in regret, and alone.

Javert said, slowly, "Even if these poor lads would be so misguided as to haunt anyone, which I doubt, then why seek to purposefully drive them away? Better they haunt me than someone who would truly be terrified. Perhaps when they realise their efforts are in vain, they will move on."

A loud clattering sound in the near-dusk made both of them jump violently apart.

"What the devil --"

"A shovel has just fallen over," Valjean said, his voice a fraction higher than usual. He gestured with a finger that was not entirely steady.

Inspector Javert said, too-loudly, "We should leave, Monsieur. This structure has been condemned and may not be entirely safe."

"An excellent idea," Valjean said, and took Javert's proffered arm -- it would not do for a prisoner to come to any harm while on probation -- and they quitted the premises in haste.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In an attempt to get to the bottom of things, Javert pays Marius a visit.

The next morning, Javert woke to the familiar sounds of the creaking that was not the shutter and clanging that was not a pail, and he decided that this state of affairs had gone on for long enough. He would look into this theory of Jean Valjean's that he was being haunted by the Friends of the ABC, and he would get to the bottom of matters in the same way as he would pursue any criminal investigation.

The Inspector was a man of action. Climbing out of bed, he decided that on his way to work that day he would call on one Marius Pontmercy, an intimate of the Friends and a co-conspirator in the uprising at the Rue de la Chanvrerie. If truly the ghosts of the Friends were walking the land of the living, this former comrade would surely be a better candidate for haunting than one police spy who had been merely trying to do his duty that afternoon the barricades fell.

Although both Valjean and Cosette had kept Javert informed about Marius' recovery, he had not seen Marius since the time he had helped Valjean convey the boy half-dead to his grandfather's house. He noted the youngster looked indeed much revived, though paler and thinner and far removed from the idealistic former student who had begged two pistols from him at the Rue de Pontoise station-house in the past winter.

Of course, Marius had not seen the Inspector since his friends had bound rope around Javert's neck and allowed his future father-in-law to drag him off to be shot. He turned pale when he set eyes on Javert standing at attention in his grandfather's drawing room.

“Holy God — Inspector!"

Javert had been the subject of many epithets in his long career, albeit less savoury ones uttered by far less savoury characters. "Only the Divine is holy, M. le Baron," he said, catching Marius by the elbow as the lad staggered, and assisting him to a seat.

"I saw you taken away," Marius murmured. "I saw _M. Fauchelevent_ take you away — so after all he did not — oh, thank God!"

Javert said, grimly, "And well might you thank the Divine indeed, for the State is prosecuting those rebels who survived the barricades, and you are not amongst the defendants."

Marius put a hand to his brow. "I know. I cannot remember how I was brought here from the Chanvrerie — all I can recollect is falling with my friends, and I could have sworn I had died. I was most surprised to wake up, here, safe in my bed."

Javert realised Marius did not know Valjean had retrieved him from the barricades. He considered disclosing this fact to Marius, but thought the better of it: Valjean had clearly had his reasons for mentioning it, and the secret was Valjean's to tell.

"Have you come here to arrest me?" Marius asked, in a voice that only shook slightly.

This was another thing which Javert had considered and then thought the better of. The impressionable youngster had been influenced by others to fight for an ostensibly noble cause, and M. Vidocq would have agreed with an administrative decision to offer probation rather than trial and incarceration. 

"Do you regret your actions?" Javert enquired. Remorse was a powerful mitigating factor in sentencing.

Marius looked fearful for an instant, and then he lifted his chin resolutely. "I regret the lives lost, Inspector. I regret that I let M. Fauchelevent take you away without doing more to stop him, and every day I regret most bitterly that my friends are dead and I am alive. But I do not regret our cause, or that I was ready to lay down my life in the name of those who cannot fight for themselves. I hope you do not arrest me, sir, but I would be ready to account for my actions if you did." 

In Marius' ringing words were the echoes of creaking windows and frantic guns and the dripping of his friends' blood... 

Javert said, sharply, holding up one hand, "Do you hear that?"

"...Hear what?" Marius took a breath, and then looked around him in confusion.

"The clanging, the blood," Javert began to say, but he saw at once it was useless. Marius heard nothing, and Javert could not believe the rebels' ghosts would not manifest themselves before the only one of the Friends to survive.

Which meant that the ghosts that haunted his days were other than the Friends of the ABC.

"Damn it," Javert muttered to himself. The noises seemed louder than ever.

"Are you all right, Inspector?" Marius asked tentatively. "Would you also like to sit down?"

Javert pulled himself together. "I am well," he said, forcing himself to speak evenly. "And no, I did not come here to arrest you. I am prepared to accept your undertaking that there will be no more violence, that you will use only legal means of protest from now on."

"You do have my undertaking. Thank you, Inspector. You cannot know what this means to me ... you see, I am to be married soon," and Marius swallowed hard and had to look away.

"I know," Javert said. Marius looked up at him, blinking in surprise, and it was at this point that an ancient footman entered the drawing room to announce the arrival of Jean Valjean.

Javert had given up being surprised over the way his paths kept crossing with that man's. "But of course! Who else would be here," he muttered to himself. 

Valjean was in his turn most startled to see Javert in the Pontmercy drawing room. "I did not realise you two were familiar with each other," he said, and the hunted look returned to his eyes. As before, it was a look that would once have filled Javert with satisfaction, but now it suffused him with a deep regret. 

Marius said, "Why, sir, I have known the Inspector for some time, and I recognised him also at the barricades this summer! And in fact — I must confess this — I thought you had taken him off to be shot. I am so glad that you released him instead; you are a better man than I!"

Marius clasped Valjean's hands and bowed over them, but this tender gesture brought no relief to Valjean's eyes. Looking hesitantly over Marius' head at Javert, he asked, "So, you told him what happened after...?"

"I told him nothing," Javert said curtly. "What he knows is that you had me in your power, and then you set me free. I have told him I will not arrest him provided he eschews future violence... Also, he does not hear what I hear, and I believe this puts paid to your idea about ghosts."

"Ah, you came here to see about that," Valjean said, his brow clearing. Then he frowned again. "How did you conclude what you did?"

Javert said, "It was a sound theory of yours, but he hears nothing."

As Javert said that, he realised that he, too, heard nothing. The room was quiet; nothing creaked or dripped. Javert cast his mind back and realised the noises had fallen silent again when Valjean entered the house. It was most mysterious.

As if to illustrate the truth of Javert's remarks, Marius raised himself and addressed Valjean earnestly, continuing to clasp Valjean's hands. ”Sir, the Inspector has been so good as to offer me a conditional release, and he has my eternal gratitude! Now I may wed Cosette with a clear conscience." He cleared his throat and visibly pressed Valjean's fingers, gnarled and powerful in his more slender ones. "And I am sorry I ever doubted you. Please forgive me. I hope that you will let me call you Father, and consent to stay with us in this house after Cosette and I are married."

Surprisingly, Valjean went pale at Marius' words, pulling his hands from Marius' grasp.

"I do not deserve... I cannot," he said at last, his voice shaking.

Javert might once have agreed. Who would have thought that a fugitive from justice could live freely amongst honest citizens, entirely at liberty to commit further crimes? But a man placed on probation for good behaviour might be permitted to do so, while serving his parole, provided no one was being materially misled.

Marius frowned in confusion. "I do not understand," he said. "Would you like to discuss this over some breakfast? M. l'Inspecteur, you are also welcome to join us."

"I think not," Javert said, taking in Valjean's pallor and discomfited expression. "I am required at the Prefecture, and I need to confer with M. Fauchelevent before my meetings. Excuse us as we take our leave. And as for you, M. le Baron, remember that your discharge is conditional on your continued good behaviour."

He realised obfuscation was coming more easily to him these days. Clearly some combination of the Sûreté and his new superior was having an effect on him; either that, or the new and not entirely convenient desire for the well-being of Jean Valjean. 

  


*

  


As they left the Pontmercy house, the gratitude in Valjean's eyes — reminiscent of the night of the insurgency when Javert had helped him convey Marius home — was as pleasing as the hurt had once been. More pleasing, even; it made Javert wish to compensate with ill temper. 

When they had regained the relative privacy of the street, Javert turned to glare at Valjean.

"Why did you not tell the boy the truth? I realise his natural state of mind might be one of general confusion, but you are making things worse — for yourself as well as for him."

Valjean looked evasively to the side, and then back again. When it became apparent Javert was awaiting a response, and would maintain that interrogative stance until he answered, he sighed heavily. 

"What would you have me do, Javert? I am still a criminal and a fugitive. You might have placed me on probation, but that cannot erase my past."

The misery and shame in Valjean's expression filled the Inspector with a deep disquiet. He did not understand precisely why that would be so, because the sentiments Valjean was expressing would have been perfectly proper in the usual course of events.

Of course, they were not now living in a world that was running on its usual course.

"What of it?" he asked Valjean, slowly. "Criminals have families too. If men can change, then those closest to them should be able to accept their pasts."

Valjean stared at Javert as if he could not believe the Inspector was trying to reassure him. Truth be told, Javert could barely believe it himself. 

Hesitantly, Valjean said, "But what if their love is based on a lie? Is it not better for them that they never loved such a criminal at all?"

"I cannot believe you mean that," Javert returned. "The good a person has done in his life would not be so easily undone by committing one offence, and vice versa.”

Javert stopped momentarily: he realised that he was speaking as much of himself as Valjean.

He continued, awkwardly, "Further, if he was remorseful and had paid his debts to society for his crimes, a rehabilitated criminal could properly be forgiven for his past and re-integrated into his family." 

"Not if the family did not know," Valjean said. "Not if they ought not be told, to protect them."

Javert had made his career out of telling hard truths regardless of whether the recipients had asked to be told them. Omissions and half-truths were new to him. He was prepared to be convinced that even outright untruth might be necessary for the good of the State and his new superior, but he could not for the life of him understand why lying to Valjean's family would be necessary for anyone's good, least of all Valjean's. 

He said as much to Valjean now, and in no uncertain terms. Valjean sighed again.

"I cannot compound my crimes by making accomplices of the children; it would be cowardice as well as fraud. I may not now be denounced by the police, or pursued by the Sûreté, or tracked by criminals, but I am answerable to my own conscience. And that conscience would not permit me to blight my child's happiness by either continuing to mislead her or by destroying her innocence, all for the sake of my own comfort."

Valjean sounded more tired and defeated than Javert had ever heard him. When he stopped speaking, he had to lean for a moment against the nearest wall. In the morning light, he looked as if he had suddenly aged years.

Javert had no idea what response to make to this. There was an unfamiliar urgency within him that he could not articulate or explain.

He eventually settled for taking hold of the lapels of Valjean's coat. "What will you do? They will soon be married, Valjean; you cannot hide from the two of them forever."

Valjean did not struggle or pull away; he leaned wearily into Javert's grasp. His breath made puffs in the cold October morning. Under the coat, Javert felt the warmth of Valjean's body, still powerful, still full of life, despite his attitude of exhausted despair.

Valjean said, slowly, "I do not know what else I can do. How could I encumber their married life with my misery or my deceit?"

"Don't be foolish," Javert muttered. "You would be allowed, more than allowed, provided you were to disclose your antecedents in the proper way."

"How can I?" Valjean said. "When my child came to Paris, she set eyes upon convicts in a chain gang. She never forgot it. What kind of father would I be, to permit such horror to be brought to her home? And the monstrous part is that I am in truth not her father at all."

A spasm of grief crossed his broad face. "I must go," he said. "I must consider --" 

Abruptly, he pulled free of Javert's clasp as if it had no force at all, and started to walk rapidly down the street away from Javert, in the opposite direction to that of the Cité.

Javert watched Valjean's back retreating down the length of Filles-du-Calvaire, and heard the creaking and clanking start up again: filling the spaces between Valjean's footsteps with deafening noise, the rhythm of Valjean's boots sounding like anvils, the surge of his powerful form like a receding tide.

At this rate, he would never be rid of the mystery of the noises, or of the secrets belonging to Jean Valjean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did say there would be more coming ;) Thanks, as always, to esteven and Miss M for the consult and beta!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Javert calls on Cosette Fauchelevent, and formulates another theory as to the basis for the haunting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Miss M and esteven for continuing their beta duties!

That afternoon after his visit to No. 6 Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, Valjean was not at home to visitors, nor the afternoon following. Toussaint, Valjean's housekeeper, informed Javert that M. Fauchelevent had gone out, and she could not say when he would return that day. 

Javert did not realise that he had gnashed his teeth together in frustration until Toussaint blanched and shut the door rather more loudly than was polite. The noise of Valjean's front door closing in his face echoed the clanging sound in his head. 

Was it his imagination, or were the noises increasing in volume? 

He had not expected to spend the afternoon alone. He sat in his apartment for the duration of the long day, surrounded by the cacophony of ghosts.

 

*

 

On the next day, Sunday, when Javert called on No. 7 Rue de l'Homme-Armé to escort Valjean to church as had become their habit, Valjean was also not there. Javert had not realised how much he had come to appreciate Valjean's presence at his side under the quiet windows of the Église Saint-Sulpice until it was denied to him.

Finally giving way to the white-hot clanging under his breast-bone, Javert called on the station-house at Place du Châtelet and commandeered official ink and paper in order to pen the man a note:

_M. Fauchelevent:_

_I note you have not made yourself available for our customary meetings over the past two afternoons, nor today, this Sunday the __th of October, 1832. Perhaps you have been unwell._

_In any event, I am constrained to remind you that your currently privileged position depends entirely on your demonstration of continued good conduct. If indeed you have chosen not to co-operate with your probation, it might be necessary to resort to further measures as may be deemed reasonable and proportionate._

_If the terms of your probation are no longer convenient owing to a change in circumstances, please contact me at No. 55 Rue des Vertus to make alternative arrangements._

_Yours,  
Javert, Insp. (Special Commissioner)_

  


*

  


He rose on Monday morning as usual and, rather than taking his usual route to the Cité, he made a detour to Rue de l'Homme-Armé instead to deliver the note to Valjean. 

As with the last few days, he did not find Valjean at home. Instead, unexpectedly, he encountered Cosette Fauchelevent leaving the apartment in the company of Toussaint, no doubt on her way to visit the Baron Pontmercy.

"Inspector! Please come in," Valjean's adopted daughter said, and stepped back across the threshold to beckon him inside. Javert started to demur, realising that he was imposing, but she smiled, insisting that it was no trouble at all and that she would not be expected for an hour or so more.

Crossing the doorstep, Javert remembered how, returning here from the Gillenormand house on the night of the uprising, Valjean had sought to explain to Javert the state of his domestic affairs. 

"I should tell you, I rescued Fantine's child from Montfermeil, as I had promised Fantine I would. She lives with me now. She does not know she is not my daughter... Please let me say goodbye to her in my own way," he had said as he had opened the door to No. 7, and Javert had hurried up the stairs behind him to discover the girl herself anxiously waiting at the door for Valjean to return. 

Javert had instantly seen her mother in her, although he had not thought that he would. In a flash, he remembered Fantine on her knees in the freezing streets of Montreuil-sur-Mer, as clearly as if it had been the day before and not almost ten years ago. 

He had refused to show Fantine any mercy then, and neither had he shown her mercy when he told her the truth about Monsieur Madeleine, and she had died in a state of terror. He had not previously regretted his actions, which had after all adhered to the strict dictates of the Law. But Valjean had shown him mercy at the barricades, sparing his life, and for some reason he was now being filled with a curious regret for all his past actions, and the strict dictates of the Law seemed entirely empty and hollow.

He'd watched the girl embrace her father and weep unselfconsciously into that damp, dirty shoulder, the gulf within him widening until it felt as if a river was flooding through him, leaving the Inspector helplessly unmoored in its current, lost and without a rudder for the first time in his life.

When she let Valjean go, she turned those eyes to him. "Why, it's a policeman! Has there been some trouble?"

Valjean had turned to look at him, too. There was a look of fear on his broad face, but underneath it was a deep weariness, a resignation to every injustice that the world had done to him, which he had nevertheless sought to repay with kindness and compassion, unfathomable though it still seemed to Javert.

In that way, in this living room, with his world knocked off its hinges by Jean Valjean, Javert had discovered he could not bring himself to arrest that man in front of his daughter. 

"There is no trouble," Javert had said, in a voice he had not recognised as belonging to the irreproachable Inspector. "Or at least, not for your father. He saved my life in the fighting at the barricades today, and his work is not yet done."

The look of shock on Valjean's face would have been satisfying had it not mirrored the horrified astonishment in his own heart. Somehow, a new moral compass had imposed itself upon the rigid dictates of the Law, and it had sought to guide his foundering vessel in a way Javert could not understand.

Javert had let Valjean's daughter make him coffee and exclaim over the blood on her father's clothes and even on Javert's own. He had even had to entertain her questioning on his own as Valjean excused himself for a long while to wash and change. It had been well past midnight when he managed to extricate himself from Valjean's house. 

Rather than heading home, or back to the Prefecture, he had taken a walk along the Quai des Gesvres and leaned against the parapet overlooking the Seine, the rush of dark water mirroring the turbulent abyss within him. 

The stars overhead, the guiding force of Law, were all dead to him. There had been only one lodestone visible to him -- the new compass, the sense of a Great Superior, which had not permitted him to arrest the man who had saved his life, despite such arrest being mandated by the Law.

If he could not condemn Valjean, what was then being demanded of him? That he destroy himself, rather than turn his back on the Law? 

Javert had spent the night on the banks of the Seine, wrestling with the unimaginable. The darkness had clung to him, damp and choking and filling him with a despair he had not known before. He had devoted his entire life to upholding the letter of the Law, and now that life was shown to have been a lie. It would have been easier to have made an ending to that lie and that life, to have climbed upon the parapet and leaped, and let the water take the impossible choice away. 

Javert did not leap. As dawn rose over the golden rooftops of the Palais de Justice and the grand dome of the Cathédrale Notre-Dame, he shouldered that hopeless burden, walked to the Rue Pavée, and made an appointment at the Sûreté to see M. Vidocq.

  


  


A former fugitive from justice himself, the Chief of Police of the Sûreté had been wryly taken with Javert's moral dilemma over one unnamed criminal, who had so improbably reformed and had shown Javert an even more improbable mercy. 

"I knew I was onto something when I asked you to come on board before," M. Vidocq had said pointedly. Then he held out his hand. "Join us, my good man. Sometimes the Law is neither black nor white but shades of grey, and I've never let it get in the way of doing the right thing; nor should you." 

This pronouncement would once have filled Javert with unspeakable horror. But after the sleepless night he had spent on the Quai des Gesvres, he grasped it as a lifeline. 

That afternoon, after the appointment formalities were over, Javert had travelled to this very apartment to make Valjean an offer of probation. At that time, Cosette had also been there as she was now, and in order to converse with the man out of her earshot, Javert had been compelled to ask Valjean to take a walk with him. 

Once more he had found himself on the Quai des Gesvres, the river rushing ceaselessly beneath, save now he had his nemesis by his side in the flesh, rather than as an imagined phantom of his new conscience.

"After my night here, I find I have reconsidered the position on your arrest," he found himself saying. "You have served your time, and the Prefecture is aware that you saved me. I find myself empowered with some discretion by the Sûreté, and I have chosen to make you an offer of probation."

Valjean had not understood any of it, and said as much. The confusion on his broad face had been curiously troubling, and the slow dawning of gratitude even more so. 

They had returned to the apartment, where he had in his turn offered Javert a cup of coffee; they had sat at the kitchen table and drunk together, and after a while he had accepted Javert's offer. 

 

 

Cosette now waved Javert to a chair at that same table and started to remove her bonnet, remarking, "I have not seen you now for many weeks, M. l'Inspecteur, though I know you have continued to see my father."

"That's true, it has indeed been some time," Javert said. In the weeks that followed the insurgency, Javert had called on Cosette as well as Valjean, heedless of the breach of protocol involved in a man visiting an unmarried lady without her father or brother present -- he, Javert, was an agent of the police pursuing a line of investigations, and besides he had Valjean's implied consent to do so. 

Cosette had met these covert interrogations fearlessly, and Javert was eventually persuaded. Valjean had clearly raised an honest citizen who had no idea of her father's criminal past or previous sacrifices. Also, she had herself never caused any trouble with the law, which was more than he could have said for that new fiancé of hers.

Javert had wanted to tell her what Valjean had done for her. But he had come to realise that this was Valjean's story to tell.

Toussaint poured coffee for them while Cosette filled the breach by making conversation about her impending nuptials, and the latest political news of the day. Then she leaned forward and looked at him sympathetically. "How have you been, Monsieur? Forgive me, but you look as if you have been working too hard. Is it because of the poor men whom the State is putting on trial this month?"

Javert passed a hand over his brow. "It is not the St. Merry trial," he said. "For the record, I believe the case against some of the defendants is weak, and that the Procureur-Général might expect some acquittals. It is just... I have not been sleeping well. I have been hearing noises. It may mean I was hurt more badly at the barricades in June than at first I thought."

She fixed him with a surprised blue gaze. "Inspector, I thought I was the only one! Since that night, I have also been hearing things. I would have thought I was dreaming, except that I hear the noises when I am awake. I have not mentioned this to Papa, or even to Marius, because it was so unlikely."

This gave Javert pause. He was not accustomed to being so taken by surprise. Then again, this family seemed to do it on a regular basis. 

"What kinds of sounds might that be, Mademoiselle?"

She frowned. "A thumping sound, like someone taking something from a shelf. Then there is a sound like a lid is being lifted. Then the sound of someone crying."

Javert was speechless for a long moment. The drip-drip-drip continued, just on the edges of his earshot.

The bed Fantine had died in had creaked with the last throes of her ebbing life. The manacles Javert had brought to recapture Valjean had clanged together in his, Javert's, hands. Fantine had been buried in a pauper's grave, and the rain had fallen over it like the tears Valjean had shed over her body that night. 

"Why would your mother haunt you," Javert was about to ask, and then he choked it back. He realised Fantine would have ample reason to haunt _him_ : the man who had condemned her to death as surely as if he had himself pulled the trigger. The question would be why she had chosen now to start. 

Javert could not tell whether it was indeed Fantine's ghost which was responsible for the spectral noises. The understanding that he had been wrong to condemn Fantine those years ago, that Jean Valjean had been right to save her, filled him with the same ringing emptiness he had experienced that night in June; the space between regret and redemption had never seemed more unsurpassable. 

"Are we being haunted?" Cosette said, hesitantly. "I mean, I do not feel afraid, or that the ghost, if it is that, wishes me any harm. Is that how it is with you?"

The sounds fell obligingly silent, and Javert thought hard for a moment.

"I do not feel afraid either," he said. "But there is definitely a sense of sadness, and horror, and the noises may be increasing in volume."

"Should we tell Papa?" Cosette wanted to know. "He left the apartment very early today, and passed all of yesterday in prayer in church."

So, Valjean had spent the previous day in church after all, and had chosen to attend without him. Javert said, "I have told your father about my noises. He thought it was the rebels who were haunting me, but that does not seem to be the case."

Cosette frowned. "Perhaps he will suggest we should see a priest. Is that not what one does, with ghosts?"

"I believe that is the conventional wisdom, yes." Javert felt exhausted, and his day was just beginning. "When your father returns home, perhaps you could give him this."

As Cosette took the note, Javert felt a moment of doubt -- he had written it in anger, possibly not in the right spirit, and it perhaps did not convey what Javert had intended it to. 

But then, Javert was not entirely certain of what indeed he intended to convey to Jean Valjean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In 1831, the Sûreté had moved from its previous venue on the Ile de la Cite at No. 6 Rue petite Sainte-Anne to the Rue Pavée in the Marais; the road apparently escaped Baron Haussmann's restructuring and remains in the 4th arrondissement. See [Vidocq's memoirs](https://archive.org/stream/memoirsvidocqwr02vidogoog/memoirsvidocqwr02vidogoog_djvu.txt) and [address summary](http://www.terresdecrivains.com/Eugene-Francois-VIDOCQ-a-Arras).


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Valjean and his probation officer have a vehement difference of views.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, so grateful to Miss M and esteven for the beta!

It did not take Javert long to find out what his note had in fact conveyed to Valjean. 

Javert spent the day reviewing the paperwork from the First Bureau and trying to ignore the creaking that did not emanate from the windows in his office. The Prefecture seemed emptier than usual. It would seem that many of his colleagues had gone to observe the St Merry trial, the formal proceedings of which had finally commenced. 

M. Gisquet had made no secret of his determination to track down anyone connected with the events of June 1832 and to see them prosecuted to the fullest letter of the law. Had he known of Marius, or indeed of any other survivors from the barricades at the Rue de la Chanvrerie, the new Prefect would have been relentless in his pursuit. Gisquet had personally supervised the search for the tradesmen and students and common folk who had comprised the St Merry defendants. He had attended many of the preliminary mentions involved in the case and had cleared his schedule so that he could himself be in attendance throughout the formal trial proceedings. 

Javert knew that mere months before, he would have been unquestioningly at Gisquet's side, leading the hunt against the insurgents, convinced beyond doubt that it was entirely just to enforce the Law fully and impartially against every soul who had fallen short. It still amazed him that he had managed to persist in serving Authority and at the same time had allowed Marius and Valjean to walk free, and could even continue to live with himself. 

Could the Law be bent without breaking and still retain its supreme moral authority? For that matter, could a servant of the Law? Surrounded by the noises that clanged in time with his doubts, Javert felt no more certain of the answer to those questions than he had been that night on the Quai des Gesvres.

In the afternoon Javert checked in at the Sûreté to see if his services were required, but M. Vidocq was apparently too busy with his own concerns with the St. Merry case to see anyone. 

Javert learned the back story from one of the agents whom he encountered in the Chief's antechamber. It seemed Gisquet had raised some concerns with the enforcement methods deployed by agents of the Sûreté, and the whole office was bristling with the Prefect's criticism. 

"The bastard's up to something, you mark my words," Denis muttered. "He's never been keen on those of us not squeaky-clean, even though he told the Chief he had no problem with it."

Javert did not mention that he himself still shared something of that view. He was aware of Denis' previous conviction for assault; even though the man was a reasonably effective police agent and appeared to all accounts to have been fully rehabilitated, old habits died unfortunately hard.

Denis frowned, as if belatedly remembering that Javert also worked at the Prefecture and had in fact been known for his implacable, impossible standards. "Keep it to yourself," he muttered sourly, and hastened away, leaving Javert to wonder what other secrets the Sûreté was harbouring. 

 

*

 

When Javert returned to Rue des Vertus in the seasonal rain, he discovered Jean Valjean standing just outside the shelter of the doorway, waiting for him. Autumn's lengthy shadows painted him in darkness, and all at once his broad figure appeared as strong and vital as it had been in Montreuil. 

Over the long months of their mutual probation, Javert had become increasingly familiar with the kind, trustworthy man who had allowed Javert to escort him through the streets of Paris, who had offered his opinions on books and politics and the needs of the poor in measured, humble tones, and who had spent his Sundays in prayer and contemplation at Javert's side without a murmur of complaint. 

He had grown so accustomed to Valjean's mild nature and what seemed like an inexhaustible supply of patience and long-suffering, that he had almost forgotten the brawny threat of Jean-le-Cric, the raw strength and duplicity of M. Madeleine. 

Almost against his will, Javert remembered the strapping prisoner who had caught a fallen caryatid in Toulon and held it, creaking, upon his massive back; the fugitive who had ripped a bar from Fantine's deathbed with a mighty ringing noise to use as a weapon. 

It was that same man who stood before him now, rainwater dripping from his coat, his muscular frame shaking with suppressed emotion that could be fear, but in all likelihood was not.

"M. l'Inspecteur, I received your summons," Valjean said, tightly. "I could not tell if it was a warning or a demand, but it clearly required a response, and I am here."

"Please come up to my apartment," Javert said. He did not know if the hot emotion that flooded through him in turn was triumph, or relief, or something else. 

Valjean followed him up the stairs obediently, his sleek head bent, to all outward appearances as docile as a model probationer ought to be. He entered Javert's apartment quietly enough. When Javert nodded, he took off his sodden coat and hat and hung them on the rail by the door. 

The room was freezing; Javert's landlady had been prohibited from lighting the fire when Javert was not in residence, and Javert set about doing that himself. It took some time. 

When Javert turned from the nascent glow of the hearth-side, he looked into the ruddy, vehement countenance of Jean Valjean.

So it had definitely not been fear, then.

Valjean said, between his teeth, "Your note mentioned further measures you might take to secure my co-operation. I told you months ago that I was willing to surrender myself to the police, and I will not go back on my word."

His eyes flashed dangerously in the firelight. "But I do not appreciate you threatening to take away my privileges, Inspector. If you wish to revoke my probation, you would be empowered to do so without needing to resort to coercion. After all, I am a convict who does not deserve preferential treatment."

There was a furious clanging in Javert's breast. "I do not mean to threaten nor coerce you," he said, straightening to his full height. "But if you do not co-operate with the terms of your probation, I will be compelled to take action. Don't you see -- I do not wish to do so, Valjean, and will not unless you force my hand."

Valjean took a step forward until he was standing chest to chest with Javert. His anger curled off his powerful body, hot enough to turn the dampness of his clothes to steam. 

Slowly, he said, "I need no special treatment from you. You need not pretend any longer. I had thought we had come to understand each other over these last months, and your kindness after we visited Marius this week made me believe you saw the man, not just the criminal, and even something more than that." 

Valjean had come so close that Javert could see the whites of the man's eyes, the flare of his nostrils, the enraged tremors of his lips. His voice shook. "I now know how you truly regard me, Inspector; your note made that perfectly clear. I should never have forgotten my place." 

"I have never pretended," Javert said, struggling to keep his composure against the ire rising in his own throat. "Over these last months you have conducted yourself ideally, you have more than earned your privileges, I gave you no special treatment that was not deserved."

There was a heated flicker in Valjean's eyes. Javert continued, "I agree we had indeed come to understand each other." Which was true, more than true; Javert had been so convinced of Valjean's goodness, had so trusted the satisfying accord that they seemed to have reached with each other, that he was now entirely unprepared for this blaze of rebellion. "And this is why I do not understand why you are now refusing to see me, or to co-operate with your probation."

Valjean said, his face red: "I was not _refusing to co-operate with my probation_! I could not see you because I was not yet ready to decide what should be told to Marius and Cosette. You said so many things I had never thought of -- I had never believed it would be possible for me to live openly after the children were married. I needed more time to consider what I ought to do." 

His large fists clasped and unclasped themselves at his side. "Of course I should not have expected my probation officer to understand." 

Javert could not say anything in response to this. He felt his own hands curl into fists; unfamiliar fervour surged through him like a wild current.

Valjean drew an uneven breath and took a step away, and then another. He seized his wet coat and hat from the hook. His voice was unsteady as he said, "M. l'Inspecteur, please assure yourself of my efforts to continue in good conduct. I fully intend to co-operate with the Sûreté in all pertinent matters, to satisfy them that I will not re-offend."

He squared his shoulders. "But I do not wish you to visit my apartment or to call on my daughter any longer. I will attend on you at the Sûreté instead, as is no doubt the nature of formal probation arrangements."

It was only after Valjean had left, banging the door behind him, that Javert realised that the man had refused to call him by his name, and that his policeman's title had never sounded so mockingly hollow.

He did not comprehend any of it -- Valjean's reluctance to come clean with Cosette; Valjean's inability to understand the constraints he, Javert, was under; Valjean's inexplicable, passionate rage.

In Valjean's absence, the clanging returned, sounding equally hollow too, faint and ironic. The unknown ghostly noises -- made by Fantine or the boys from the Chanvrerie barricade or neither of these -- either did not approve of the terms of Valjean's probation, or Javert's treatment of the man, or possibly both. 

The sounds swept through Javert's empty apartment, creaking and lonely and filled with sorrow, but if they were trying to communicate any specific message, that meaning was lost on the Inspector.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Still haunted by the inexplicable sounds and Valjean's even more inexplicable conduct, Javert goes to observe the proceedings at the Saint-Merry trial.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Miss M and Esteven for their continued and invaluable betahelp <3  
> 

True to his word, Valjean paid a visit to the Sûreté the next afternoon. 

Javert took his probationer for a walk around the Marais, away from his colleagues' prying eyes. Javert asked after Marius, and Valjean told him the boy was quite well. His manner was polite, but his expression was shuttered, and he did not meet Javert's eyes. 

Their cursory perambulation soon brought them back to Rue Pavée. Valjean paused, then announced, "Tomorrow I may be late. I have promised the headmistress at the école mutuelle that I would visit in the afternoon."

"You need not come every day; I do not so mistrust you,” Javert said. “I know you are not trying to evade your probation. Once a week will suffice."

Valjean looked almost disappointed. Javert could not imagine why. Surely, after what had transpired the previous day, Valjean would not wish to see him more frequently than once a week?

Now that Javert considered it, while these revised parole conditions were certainly reasonable, the thought of not speaking with Valjean more frequently also made him feel curiously empty. 

That strange sensation lengthened the days that followed, filling them with the creaking and clanging sounds where there might otherwise have been a regretful silence. 

  
  


*

  
  


At the Prefect’s request, Javert donned his City uniform and headed to the Cour d'Assize to observe the closing days of the St-Merry trial. 

By this time the trial had already been ongoing for four days, and the courtroom had become so packed that even the relatives of the defendants could not always secure a seat in the salle d’audience. Still, the bailiff always found room for officers of the police, and Javert and his colleagues joined their fellows standing guard beside the dock. 

There were twenty-two defendants in the St. Merry trial: two absent, nineteen mostly-young men, and one young lady. The ringleader, Charles Jeanne, did not at all resemble a revolutionary until one looked into his eyes. He was accompanied by Jean Vigouroux, a young soldier from the 62nd régiment de ligne, Rojon of the National Guard, and assorted tradesmen: retired trader Rossignol, Goujon the cobbler, Fourcade the clerk. Librarians and merchants, tailors and students, a cabinetmaker from Italy -- it was the working class of Paris that was arrayed in the dock, facing charges of rioting and treason.

What would have convinced these everymen to join the insurgency? They might have been swept up with the violent mob, or they might have felt this to be the only blow they could have struck for their relatives, their neighbours, the common people of France.

Javert was familiar with the rhythms of courtroom advocacy, the strut of the advocat-général and various defence counsel and the interjections of the presiding judge. As his younger colleagues debated points of trial strategy amongst themselves in hushed tones, he focused his attention on the defendants sitting in chains in the dock, each with a gendarme escort. 

It seemed Jeanne had already made several impassioned outbursts which had stirred up public sentiment in Court. He was slight of stature and did not appear physically strong, and yet he had served with distinction in the National Guard and fought with courage in the Three Glorious Days, the Croix de Juillet displayed on his breast. Beside him young Vigouroux wore his soldier's uniform, and Rojon, the bright colours of the National Guard. 

These men, together with the others being charged in absentia, had apparently left the side of the Law and turned their weapons on Authority, in order to do battle with the greater crime of injustice. This parallel with his own choice was not lost on Javert.

Even though Javert had not been following the trial from its start, it soon became clear to him that the proceedings were not going particularly well for the prosecution. State witnesses called to provide identification evidence had failed to give compelling testimony -- it was dark, events had occurred too quickly, identifying features were not easy to come by. Others who had been asked to attest to the bloodthirsty conduct committed by the revolutionaries retracted their evidence about riotous crimes -- there had not been the indiscriminate looting as had originally been claimed, and the insurgents had in fact tried to protect civilians and treated captured soldiers with courtesy.

During a short recess, Gisquet looked up from his seat behind the bar table, spotted Javert, and walked over. "Everything all right at the office?" he wanted to know. 

"Yes, sir. Unnaturally so, in my book," Javert said. "It may be that even criminals have developed an interest in this trial."

Gisquet snorted. "You are too optimistic. How do you think it is proceeding?"

"Not well," Javert said, truthfully. "The identification evidence is weak. It may be that when our men left no stone unturned, some of them were rather more eager to unearth pebbles than they should have been."

Gisquet's penetrating stare conveyed to Javert, somewhat belatedly, that his Prefect did not share his views. "Indeed," Gisquet said slowly. "But we cannot fault the men for their zeal to root out treachery and depravity." 

"They ought to have done it with a more diligent eye to preserving evidence," Javert said, before he could stop himself. "The young soldier, Vigouroux, he was not captured at the material time but much later, is that not so?"

"Yes, and we have impeccable eyewitness testimony that places him at the scene," Gisquet said. His frown deepened. "I must say, Inspector, I am surprised by your marked lack of enthusiasm regarding these malefactors. You were dogged in the pursuit of all criminals before your own experiences at the Chanvrerie; one might now feel you were permanently de-clawed."

He turned abruptly and returned to his seat. Javert had to catch his breath: the soft creaking that was not from the court's floorboards and the clanging that was not from the defendants' chains filled him with foreboding.

It turned out that Vigouroux had been identified hiding under a lady's bed at No. 30, Rue Saint-Martin. The lady in question, a demoiselle Morand, did provide reliable witness evidence, and the defendant's averments that she was mistaken were distinctly half-hearted. Javert had no doubt Vigouroux was prevaricating, perhaps on the instructions of lawyers; the discomfort showed in the honest, handsome lines of the young man's face.

Regardless of Vigouroux' perjury, Javert could not help feeling sympathy for the young soldier, who had clearly wished to take a stand against injustice, who had not considered the consequences of his actions, and who was now facing imprisonment and ignominy and a ruined life. 

Javert knew he would not have felt such sympathy mere months ago, when this soldier had taken up arms on the barricades of St-Merry. Perhaps Gisquet was right: his experiences had de-clawed him, or, more accurately, he had been de-clawed by the moral compassion of Jean Valjean. 

  
  


*

  
  


Over the next days of the trial, despite Gisquet's admonishments, Javert became increasingly convinced as to the futility of this prosecution. Half the defendants ought not have been brought to trial, and as for the others -- were treason charges necessary? They had thought they were fighting for a better France; it was hardly justice to make an example of them. Neither was it particularly productive: far better might it have been to strike a bargain with the main culprits in exchange for admissions of guilt and quietly reduced sentences. Now there was the simmering resentment in the streets, and a bone-deep fear that might later fuel an even more violent uprising.

Of course the procurer-général had discretion in how the Law was best served, in the same way as policemen had the discretion as to how Authority was to be enforced. It was moral cowardice to pretend that decision was out of their hands -- especially where that decision gave rise to injustice, to intimidation. 

Javert realised he had never before taken a stand against injustice or intimidation. That failure was a bitter clanging within him, as so many things were after the river.

"Smart outfit, Inspector," a sarcastic voice said close to his ear, interrupting the flow of his thoughts. A moment later M. Vidocq materialised out of the crowd in his customary plainclothes, and reached up to clap a hand to Javert's shoulder. No criminal or malefactor had ever managed to steal up on Javert without his knowledge, but the Chief did it every time.

"This? It's for the trial." Javert shrugged. "The Prefect thought it would be reassuring for the people to see the old uniforms."

Vidocq made a snorting noise. "Gisquet thinks the people'll be cowed by the show of force, is what it is. Thought you'd know better, Javert."

Javert frowned. He had not seen it that way, but perhaps that was true, and indeed he ought to have known better. The dictates of new moral conscience had never seemed further away than this moment; at this rate he would never manage to make sufficient reparation.

"Is there a problem with M. Gisquet, sir?"

"The man's trying to discredit us," Vidocq said, tersely. "There's a report out that Sûreté agents used excessive force to quell the insurgents who'd already surrendered. Lies, of course. Our people weren't assigned to the Chanvrerie barricades, or the ones at St-Denis."

Javert knew it was certainly true that the Sûreté had not been at the barricades of the Rue de la Chanvrerie. He suppressed a shiver.

Vidocq leaned in and spoke quietly into Javert's ear. "There's trouble afoot. In case something happens to me, you need to take steps to protect your assets."

For a moment Javert did not know what Vidocq meant, and then the realisation struck him.

Apart from the vagrants and gamins who passed intelligence to Javert, there was Jean Valjean -- more moral than any who sought to enforce the Law, but almost certainly a target were the Sûreté to be disbanded and Javert himself interrogated as to any questionable contacts he had.

The Chief said, casually, "I don't know the names of your people, nor do I want to, but you might want to make sure they're not on the books." 

Javert tried to focus. He had not entered either Valjean's or Marius' personal details into the Sûreté's register of official contacts, but he had marked in his notebook the frequent probationary meetings with Valjean, and now that Valjean had called at the Sûreté's premises, there would be a record of his visit.

If a diligent policeman with an agenda to pursue were to investigate, sooner or later Javert might be ordered to divulge the identity of this mystery contact -- and the Sûreté would not be able to assist.

Vidocq nodded and stepped away, and Javert found himself once again in the presence of M. Gisquet. 

"What did that man wish to discuss with you?" the Prefect asked, suspiciously.

Javert recovered his composure and said, "Routine matters of the Sûreté." This was not untrue, at least.

"Hm. He looks troubled. Well may he be," the Prefect said, with a smile that had no warmth in it whatsoever. "You know, Inspector, I acceded to your request to be given a role at the Sûreté. Perhaps you can assist me in enquiries concerning some of M. Vidocq's people?"

"I will of course carry out my duty," Javert said stiffly. His face was perfectly calm, his posture impeccable, but all the same Gisquet looked perturbed.

"Again, Inspector, you do not seem yourself. I would wish to see the old Javert, the legal tiger with his claws, not this hesitant other animal." 

With that parting shot, the court session resumed, and the last day of trial with it.

  
  
  
  


The evidence finally complete, the lawyers made their final submissions to the court. The remarks from Jeanne's lawyer, Maître Marie, were particularly well received, and Javert knew the murmuring approval of the crowd would be unsettling to the Prefect.

The jurors only required three-quarters of an hour to arrive at their determination. 

Fourteen of the twenty-two were set free, Mlle. Alexandre amongst them. Eight were found guilty on various charges. Two were sentenced in absentia. Goujon and Vigouroux were sentenced to six years confinement, Fourcade to five years in prison and ten years observation by the haute police. Rossignol was condemned to eight years confinement, and national guardsman Rojon to ten years of forced labour without the shame of an exposition.

Jeanne, as commander at the barricades, was sentenced to deportation, to live out his days in prison on Mont Saint-Michel in exile from his beloved France.

The courtroom was in an uproar as the acquitted parties were released, and the condemned defendants rose to be led away. Cries of "For shame!" and "Vive la Révolution!" were heard amongst the hubbub of excited noise, and the throng gathered, pushing and jostling, as the gendarmes led the prisoners through the public gallery.

The young soldier, Vigouroux, reached out to clasp the outstretched hands of well-wishers as he walked past. He looked far calmer in condemnation than he had been in the witness stand. "We will see each other again on the barricades," he said, his voice carrying bravely over the sound of the crowd.

Charles Jeanne's mother pushed her way forward through the press of bodies. Her face stoic despite her grief, she reached out to her son. The people made way for her, but her path was blocked by the gendarmes and members of the municipal guard who urged her to calm herself.

"But I am calm," she said. "I have enough courage to withstand my misfortune. Let me kiss my boy one last time before you take him away."

A tall guardsman held her inexorably back. "Madame, it is impossible. We stand upon our instructions; we must move the prisoners along. Please step aside."

Javert found himself thrusting his own way into the crowd. There was a clanging in his breast, a fury building behind his eyes. Reaching the guardsman's elbow, he said, between his teeth, "Officer, if you have any mercy in you, allow this mother to bid her son farewell."

The guardsman looked at Javert in his City uniform, and he lowered his arm. 

The sight of the son's sorrow and the mother's courage had stirred something within Javert. Here was a man not yet old, who had given up everything to take arms against an unjust society which abused its most vulnerable citizens, and now he and his family were being asked to pay the ultimate price. 

Javert felt the creaking weight of the oppression that he himself had perpetrated in the name of the Law -- on the prisoners in Toulon, on Fantine, on Valjean himself. The taste of despair at ever being able to make restitution was a slow and bitter drip down his throat. 

Slowly, he became aware his intervention on Mme. Jeanne's behalf had not gone unobserved.

In one corner of the courtroom M. Vidocq leaned against the wall, his casual posture contradicted by the complex empathy in his face. In another, the glare of the immaculately-dressed Prefect bore down upon Javert like an imminent threat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Am indebted to [The Chanvrerie.net](http://chanvrerie.net/history/revolutionaries/5-6-june-1832/) for various [transcripts](http://chanvrerie.net/history/saint-merry/premiere-audience/) of the St. Merry trial.
> 
> [ Links to drawings](http://www.gettyimages.de/detail/illustration/trial-of-mrs-caillaux-in-front-of-the-judges-of-the-assizes-grafiken/134360851) of the courtroom interiors of the Cour des Assizes, where [ the l'enceinte de la cour, la salle d’audience, and the dock can be seen](http://www.gettyimages.de/detail/illustration/vera-gelo-in-the-court-of-assizes-on-trial-for-being-accused-grafiken/134361442). The Panama illustration shows [ defendants being led into the courtroom through the salle d’audience to the dock](http://www.gettyimages.de/detail/illustration/panama-scandal-trial-at-the-court-of-assizes-of-the-seine-in-grafiken/134361708), and this is likely the route taken in the last scene where the St. Merry defendants are led from the court. 
> 
> Other fascinating details from the St. Merry trial are courtesy of Esteven, and from [Proces des 22 accusés du Cloitre Saint-Méry](http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k55408588): Vigouroux was really discovered under the bed of the demoiselle Morand! And that heartbreaking last scene with Vigouroux and Jeanne’s mother is described in detail:  
>  _Tous les accusés ont constamment montré la même impassibilité pendant le cours des débats._  
>  _M. le président ordonne de faire retirer les accusés. On leur presse les mains sur leur passage. Le jeune soldat Vigouroux dit à ses amis en leur serrant les mains: "Ce n'est rien que cela, nous nous reverrons aux barricades!"_  
>  _La mère de Jeanne s'avance pour embrasser une fois encore son fils.—Un gendarme l'arrête.—"Mais je suis calme, dit-elle, j'ai assez de courage pour supporter mon malheur; laissez-moi embrasser mon fils." — Le gendarme la laissait passer, lorsque survint un garde municipal qui s'écria: "Non! non! madame, c'est impossible! notre consigne nous le défend!" —Ses instances furent inutiles, et cette pauvre mère ne put en se retirant recevoir de son filsqu'un adieu de la main!_
> 
> A note on uniforms: Javert in Paris wears his charcoal three-caped greatcoat, top hat, and the lead-headed cane of the patrouille grise. But here at Gisquet’s behest, [in much the same way as Belleyeme wished to restore public confidence in the police in 1829](https://books.google.com/books?id=RTww4wtg_QoC&pg=PA193&lpg=PA193&dq=sergents+de+ville+1829&source=bl&ots=81rjINPcHi&sig=g9MsJHG2zUOzcjY-FbnxO54_gPw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiK_83YjbDNAhUQ0WMKHcn-BecQ6AEIKDAC#v=onepage&q=sergents%20de%20ville%201829&f=false), Javert garbs himself in the "City" uniform of the sergents de ville.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Marius begs a favour from Inspector Javert._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As ever, sterling beta work by Miss M and esteven.

There was a crowd around the Palais de Justice as well, and it was even rowdier than the one within the salle d'audience of the court: jostling, shoving, some fists raised, a hubbub of rumbling, fomenting noise.

Javert pushed his way through the throng. He noted that people still stood aside for the uniform, though they did so while muttering under their breath. Javert had some experience at reading a mob, and he could see why the Prefect was discomfited by the sense of simmering unrest amongst the citizenry that the trial had stirred up.

As he considered his Prefect's last ominous remarks, he spotted a familiar face in the crowd, cleanly shaven, still wearing the remnants of an invalid's pallor.

"Inspector --!"

"You should not be here," Javert said, taking Marius Pontmercy by the arm. "I will not ask you if the Friends of the ABC communicated with the St-Merry defendants, but if I discovered you had personal knowledge of any relevant matter, I would be compelled to refer you to the procureur-général."

"I could not stay away, Monsieur." The lad was looking wretched, as if he had not slept for the duration of the trial. "How could I hide myself in the safety of my home when our brothers faced this trial? I owed it to them to bear witness to their courage and their sacrifice."

Javert knew such pronouncements would have once filled him with frustrated rage. All he felt now was a deep weariness, and it was not even time for luncheon.

"You would not help those men by being yourself recognised and arrested," he said. "Think of your family, and your bride-to-be. I will not be able to protect you forever."

As he said this he wondered how much longer he could indeed continue to protect Marius. Would the Prefect's suspicions fuel a visit to the Sûreté the next week, or even the next day? 

Marius said, "Speaking of Cosette, and my family ... I realise I have a matter of importance to raise with you, Monsieur. Can we do so while you walk back to your offices at the Sûreté?"

With an effort, Javert stopped himself from rolling his eyes. "That is the most dangerous place for you at present. Meet me at the Café Éphèbe on the Rue des Prêtres St.-Germain, in half an hour." He had not forgotten the Gorbeau House debacle; he rather hoped Marius would be better at following instructions on this occasion. 

Marius nodded; Javert released his arm, and the young man melted away into the crowd.

  
  


*

  
  


The Éphèbe was a stone's throw from the more famous Café Momus, the infamous centre of bohemian activity in the Rue des Prêtres-Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois. As quiet as the Momus was busy, its patrons were clerks and office workers and field agents of the Sûreté, rather than flamboyant artists and musicians and doomed would-be insurgents. Its small tables saw a steady stream of police spies observing the goings-on across the street, and informants looking to keep out of trouble.

Javert, garbed once more in grey plainclothes, was ushered to his usual table, and Antoine, the Éphèbe's dour chief waiter, brought him the hard bread and cheese that comprised the unofficial fare of the café's unofficial police customers. 

Marius demurred, no doubt accustomed these days to finer dining. He tapped his fingers against his coffee cup as one with more important things on his mind than sustenance.

Javert wondered if Gisquet had uncovered Marius' involvement in the insurgency, and whether he, Javert, would be required to intervene on the lad's behalf. The astute, ruthless Prefect might wonder what political use could be made of Marius' family connections. And if Gisquet had learned about Marius' potential crimes, it would be a small step to discover the truth about Ultime Fauchelevent and the much larger crimes of Jean Valjean. 

That thought filled Javert with a disquiet that ran deeper than any ghostly creaking or clanging.

"Well? Out with it," Javert said at last, when he had finished his meal and Marius had barely drunk his coffee.

Marius said, tentatively, "I know that you have some acquaintance with Cosette's father, M. Fauchelevent..."

"Yes, you know I know him. What is the matter? Is he unwell?" Javert frowned at the thought of that man in the throes of some imagined illness, the massive body racked with fever. It was not easy to picture. "M. Fauchelevent is usually as healthy as a horse, I have known no other man as strong as he."

Marius fiddled with his cup again. "Well, I am indeed a little concerned for M. Fauchelevent's health. He has been acting strangely since that day the three of us encountered each other at my grandfather's house."

"In what way?"

"He has been refusing to dine with us and refusing to visit the house," Marius said. "Refusing to dine at all, it seems like; he claims he's eaten when he hasn't, heads out at all hours and doesn't come home, that sort of thing. Cosette has become very worried about him."

This gave Javert pause. "Mlle. Fauchelevent feels there is cause for concern?" he asked, a strange constriction in his chest.

"Yes. She said today he had mentioned a disagreement with you over some matter, which seems to be troubling him." Marius paused and looked down. Hesitantly, he said, "I have to say, Inspector, that has made Cosette rather angry with you."

"Why would she think I was responsible," Javert began, and then halted. "M. Fauchelevent mentioned that I had a disagreement with him? And Mlle. Fauchelevent feels it is this disagreement that has caused her father's current behaviour -- this not eating, this withdrawing?"

"That is so," Marius said. "I do not think M. Fauchelevent has said you are responsible, Monsieur; in fact, he has seemingly not said much of anything at all. But Cosette loves her father very much, and doesn't know why he is acting in this way, and so you will forgive her for jumping to the conclusion that it must be your fault."

Javert found that his heart was pounding, his ears filled with creaking disquiet. _He has not said much of anything at all._

"He is an old fool," Javert said grimly. "Get your hat, we're going to call on your fiancée so we can get to the bottom of this."

  
  


*

  
  


Cosette smiled to see her fiancé, but when she realised who had accompanied him to No. 7 Rue de l'Homme-Armé, her face set into guarded lines that Javert had not seen before.

"You ought to have let me know you were going to stop by," she said to Marius, coolly. "Sadly, we are unable to offer any luncheon to you or to M. l'Inspecteur."

Marius looked nervously from Cosette to Javert, and, suppressing an exasperated sigh, Javert shouldered his way past the lad. "Thank you, Mademoiselle, we have already dined. Or at least I have. Might we come in? It is a matter of importance."

Cosette looked as if she would rather have shut the door on both of them, but she visibly took hold of her composure, breathed in deeply, and let them into her apartment.

Once within, Cosette did not invite them to sit down or to offer to take their coats and hats. She remained standing in the small hallway adjacent to the kitchen table, with her arms folded and her mouth set grimly. It was of no consequence; Javert had faced down far more fearsome adversaries in his coat and hat, and preferred to be on his feet in any case when carrying out an investigation.

He said, without preamble: "Mademoiselle, M. le Baron tells me your father is unwell, and that you believe it has something to do with a disagreement we had."

"Did Marius tell you that?" Cosette turned her glare to her hapless fiancé. "Well. He should not have misspoken. I am sorry he troubled you, Inspector." She did not, of course, sound at all sorry.

Marius looked as if he wished to speak and then thought the better of it. Javert intervened firmly before the boy made things worse for himself.

"It is no trouble. He was right to speak to me of it. After all, your father's affairs are of concern to me."

Cosette lifted her chin. "And why is that so?" she asked. "I had thought you were old friends, because you seemed to know each other so well, and you have been seeing so much of each other over these months... And I saw how he would be, every time he came back and told me he had met you, and what you had talked about. It was the sort of thing old friends do."

Javert frowned again. He could not say why this took him aback, for it would have been natural for Valjean to mention him to Cosette. He supposed he had not expected the man to speak of him quite so amiably -- but then, he should cease being surprised by the man's generosity and readiness to forgive. 

Cosette continued, "But every time I bring up the past, father will not tell me a thing." She took a step toward him. "Will _you_ tell me, Inspector?"

He looked into her blue eyes. Her sudden unguardedness, her eagerness on her father's behalf, disarmed him; he did not know how to respond. Finally he said, "Mademoiselle, I cannot. This story is not mine to tell."

She coloured, abruptly; Javert could not tell if her frustration was aimed at her father or himself, or the both of them. She said, "Tell me at least if I am right, that you were friends, before... Because this is not what friends do to each other."

"And what is that?"

Her flush deepened, and her hands curled into fists. "You came here and left him a note. Which made him angrier than I had ever seen him!" Her voice shook. "And he crumpled it up and took it away with him when he went to see you, and when I went through his things later I could only find a scrap which said that he owed you a demonstration of his good conduct!"

Her anger stunned Javert into silence for a long moment. When he could speak again, he said, "You went through his things?"

" _Because I was worried!_ Because after he returned from seeing you he was so sad, and would not tell me why!" 

She took another step forward. She raised her hands, as if she meant to grab hold of his coat and shake her father's secrets out of him together with his own.

"What does he owe you, Inspector? I must know!"

Javert started to demur once more, but in the face of Cosette's anger, he found himself saying, instead:

"Nothing. He owes me nothing. It is I who am in his debt."

Cosette recoiled in surprise. Javert could not say he was any less astonished. But for all that, what he had just inadvertently confessed was unmistakably true: he owed his life to Valjean, owed Valjean his moral revelation and the current attempts to redeem his mortal soul, and was indeed in Valjean's debt.

Had he made Valjean feel as if it was the other way around? As if Valjean was the one in debt to Javert for agreeing to his parole?

"If that is so," Cosette asked, "why did you send him that note? Why did you upset him in that way?"

Javert said, slowly, "I did not think he would be upset." But of course Valjean would have had every reason to be dismayed, as anyone unjustly accused of a debt which he did not rightfully owe. "I see I was wrong."

This second confession made him feel curiously unsteady, as if a burden he had been carrying for weeks had lifted itself off his shoulders and thrown him off balance. His legs felt light. Even the noises in his head were silent.

No less unsteadily, Cosette sat down at the kitchen table. She said, "Well, then, you misunderstood him! It is not difficult to do, he never says a word to anyone..."

Abruptly, she got up again, and hastened to him with eager steps. "It is settled, now! I will tell him you are sorry, and then you can both continue as before, and he will see that it was silly of him to become so upset and to hide things from me."

Javert saw before him the image of Valjean's horrified face. And was he really _sorry_ , as Cosette had said? He could not ever recall apologising for any matter to any person, which he understood was different from admitting to a mistake, and the thought of Cosette now telling her father of his regrets was anathema. He knew he could not tell Cosette this, of course. 

"I do not think we can continue as before," he said, at last. "We have already come to new terms, your father and I."

She stared at him. "What terms might that be, Inspector?" 

"Again, I cannot speak of them to you."

This time, she did grasp his sleeve. He found he could not meet her eyes. "Is he in trouble with the police? Please tell me, M. l'Inspecteur!"

When Javert hesitated, she let out a small cry. Quickly, Marius moved to her side, making a comforting sound, and tried to take her hand. She shook him off impatiently. 

"Marius, don't you try to quiet me! For all we know you might be in trouble as well. I know the police are putting on trial men who went to the barricades. Are they also looking for you?"

Marius patted her shoulder miserably. "Don't distress yourself on my account, love. Please know that I would rather surrender myself than bring disrepute to you and your family."

"How would you surrendering yourself be of any assistance to me or my family? I don't believe how ridiculous you are!" she exclaimed.

"Cosette, you must see sense," Marius beseeched her.

"No. I forbid you to do anything so foolish. I will hear no more of it." Cosette turned her glare back to Javert. "And you, M. l'Inspecteur, if you will not tell me about my father and whether he is in trouble, then I also have little more to say to you. Please leave my house, the both of you."

Javert belatedly remembered that Valjean had asked him not to call on Cosette. It was clearly too late now to hope that she would not tell her father of this encounter. Standing here in Valjean's apartment, in a room which held the echoes of his presence, Javert found himself looking toward to as well as dreading that future conversation with Valjean.

For now, though, he had trespassed on the Fauchelevent household for long enough. He took Marius by the elbow before the young man could say something even more regrettable, and steered him toward the door. 

"Good day, then, Mademoiselle. Perhaps we will resume our conversation another time." 

"Not unless you are prepared to be more forthcoming," Cosette returned, shutting the door decisively in both their faces.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [The Café Momus](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caf%C3%A9_Momus) was known as the home of the bohemian movement. On the Right Bank near the church of Saint-Germaine-l'Auxerrois, this cafe soon became a popular meeting-place of such important Bohemians as Gustave Courbet and Alexandre Privat d'Anglemont. The Cafe Momus was [such an important location for the Bohemians](http://www.web-books.com/Classics/ON/B0/B701/16MB701.html) that it was featured in Giacomo Puccini's opera _La Bohème_.
> 
> So important that the cops would likely keep an eye on it, and where better to hang out than at the nearby Café Éphèbe, of my own invention?


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With Cosette’s help, Javert considers he has finally solved the mystery of the ghostly noises.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With grateful thanks to esteven, mistress of maps, and Miss M, who made the dialogue in this chapter finally do the heavy lifting it was supposed to <3

lt was a short enough walk from Valjean's residence to Rue Pavée, but the rest of the afternoon in the rattling, noisesome Sûreté passed by almost unbearably slowly. 

Javert felt ill at ease behind his desk, the conversation with Cosette having unsettled him in some indefinable way. He was reminded of that night in June when his entire world had been thrown into turmoil.

This afternoon, neither the noises of the office, nor the ever-present sounds of creaking and clanking, could drown out the roar of the river on whose banks he had stood that night, trying to discern the just and moral way forward, and failing. 

Javert had eventually chosen to join the Sûreté as the way to atone for his sins, as well as to preserve the life and liberty of Jean Valjean. 

Since then, there had been many unsettling conversations with that man: filled with inconvenient moral truths and even more inconvenient discussions of responsibility. 

Javert recalled such a conversation, during one of their several visits to the convent at Petit-Picpus. 

That afternoon Valjean had looked tired, like a man who had indeed seen sixty winters. He dragged his right leg; the light that he seemed to carry within him was dimmer, in the way of clouds obscuring the starry night. 

Javert had offered him an arm for support. Together they had walked along the street outside the convent and then stopped to rest by its gate. Valjean had described, as he had done several times before, the hours he had spent within the convent tending to the garden, the sounds of matins and evensong, the gentle sisters and the comforting presence of the Almighty -- the long years of peace, watching his adopted daughter grow up.

On that occasion, Javert had been moved to enquire after the effect this enforced solitude must have had on a man who had run a factory of hundreds of workers and a town of thousands, surrounded by a multitude of demands and duties and clamouring souls. 

"Answer truthfully, Valjean. I cannot imagine that you would have found those quiet years anything but dull. Surely M. le Maire was not used to such loneliness!"

Valjean had looked bemused, and then reproachful. "I did not find them dull," he said. "It was a blessing to be safely hidden." He did not say: _safely hidden from Javert himself_ , but Javert felt the sting of regret nonetheless.

Valjean had continued, "I will admit I found myself occasionally lonely. But even as Madeleine, I had always lived my life apart, unable to burden another with my secret... And the convent was unquestionably the best thing for Cosette. I would have gladly endured anything for her." 

He had fixed Javert with a curious gaze that Javert had not then understood. With a jolt, Javert now recognised it as the look Valjean had recently given him on the streets of Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, while speaking of Cosette's impending marriage.

Was Valjean planning to make another sacrifice for Cosette's happiness, in the way he had done in the convent? 

Javert abruptly rose from his desk. The sounds of creaking and clanging were deafening. He had laboured at his duties for long enough.

 

*

 

The ghostly sounds fell temporarily silent in the gathering dusk of Rue Pavée. As he walked down the steps of the Sûreté, a slender figure approached him out of the darkness. 

"Mademoiselle," Javert said, somewhat taken aback, "you should not be here. It is late, and the streets are not safe."

Cosette made an impatient, dismissive sound. "I wanted to catch you at your place of work, Inspector, but thought it was better if I did so covertly."

Javert inclined his head. "Indeed. What can I do for you?"

Cosette looked down, and then met his eyes with some effort. "I wish to apologise," she said, resolutely. "You came to see me because you were concerned about Papa, like a good friend would be, and I was rude to you. It was not fair of me to be angry with you for keeping Papa's secrets. After all, one would be expected to respect the wishes of their friends!" 

Javert felt his eyebrows raise themselves to the brim of his hat as Cosette continued, "I suppose I should trust him more. Papa has always known what to do."

"I'm not sure that is entirely so," Javert said, honestly. "But I believe that he did always try to do the right thing, and sometimes that is even more difficult."

Cosette smiled, almost unwillingly. "He is a very good man."

Javert remembered the flourishing of M-sur-m and the mayor's rescue of old Fauchelevent, remembered Fantine, remembered the night at the barricades. Remembered, also, these more recent weeks and months he had spent at Valjean's side, which finally convinced him of the man's goodness. 

"Yes, he is." Javert extended his arm, and Cosette took it; by unspoken agreement, they started back off in the direction of Rue de l'Homme Armé.

They walked in silence for long minutes, surrounded by the usual noises of the streets, the clattering of a passing cart, their footfalls upon the pavement stones, and the sounds only Javert could hear. 

When Cosette spoke again, her voice was hesitant. "You know, Inspector, I always wondered why my father rescued me from the inn, and how it was that he could have remained in the convent for my sake."

Javert frowned, and then the realisation struck. "Mademoiselle, you mean to say..."

Cosette nodded. "For some time I have suspected Papa was not the father of my birth. I have some memories of my mother, of the life we had before the inn, and then I remember him coming, much later, to retrieve me." She paused, and then looked closely at him. "I see this possibility does not surprise you, Monsieur. Clearly you have known Papa for a long time, if you knew that about him."

Who would have guessed it: this slip of a girl might have made a passingly competent police agent. "It is true," Javert said slowly. "We had known each other for many years before we each came to Paris."

Cosette waited until it was clear Javert was not going to reveal anything further. Then she said, tentatively, "I said I would not put you in more difficulty by asking you about those days... I originally thought perhaps Papa was an old relative, or that he had formed an attachment with my mother in her old town." Javert must have looked startled, for the girl flushed deeply and hastened to explain: "Because otherwise what man would be so good as to help a stranger and her child?"

"Your father would," Javert said at once. He wondered why he had never suspected Fantine of being Valjean's mistress. The unfortunate woman had been a former employee of the mayor's; Valjean had himself sworn that their relationship had been entirely proper and chaste, and Javert had believed him even then.

Cosette nodded. "Yes, I think I realised that. He is not a man to form a romantic attachment... He is so full of secrets, never calls on anyone, his pursuits are so solitary. He seems never to have had a real friend! You know, Monsieur, I never realised that until he started spending time with you."

"Is that so," Javert managed. Clearly this conversation was determined to surprise him at every turn.

Cosette continued, musingly, "I did think it was somewhat unusual, for Papa to have a policeman as a friend. But I suppose it is not so unusual for you, is it? I mean, policemen must have friends, as all men must." 

Javert felt the weight of her enquiring gaze, and cleared his throat awkwardly. "You are mistaken, Mademoiselle. I too am not in the habit of friendship. There are my colleagues and my superiors, and there are the citizens whom we guard, and there is very little in between them."

And which place would Valjean take in that strictly-defined life? Hardly an ordinary citizen, far more than a common criminal to be pursued and then paroled. A singular man, who had overcome the cruel waste of his old life and made a haven for the downtrodden in his new one; the man who had saved Javert's body, and, moreover, his soul.

"My father might have been a policeman," Cosette said, laughing. "He can run without tiring, even at his age; he can lift the heaviest loads. He might be as large and fearsome as any criminal, but really he is the gentlest man, and is only fierce in his defence of the needy."

Javert remembered these matters keenly: how Valjean had lifted a creaking cart to save a man's life, how he must have run for hours from Javert's pursuit with a shivering child in his arms. "It is in fact as you say." 

Indeed, had there been more fairness in the world, Valjean might have been a robust guardian of the Law, instead of a fugitive from it, shackled to Javert's merciless heel as if still with the clanking irons of the chain gang.

And instead of showing gratitude to Valjean for what he had done for Javert, instead of letting Valjean know that he had come to value their time together, Javert had wrenched upon those chains at the merest sign of unease -- taking umbrage at the perceived slight upon his pride, choosing to remind Valjean cruelly of impending incarceration, threatening to take the man from his daughter and everything good in life.

Valjean's anger and dismay ought to have come as no surprise. What was surprising was how long it had taken Javert to understand them. 

There was a bitter taste in his mouth. He found himself saying, "I do regret that note, Mademoiselle. I did not mean to distress your father, and I am sorry for it."

Cosette's face softened. She reached out to pat his arm with her free hand, and then took it away, clearly thinking better of it. 

"Is Papa really in trouble with the police? You need not answer any of my other questions, but if you ever cared for my father, please answer this one for me."

Javert sighed heavily. So much for keeping Valjean's secrets and hiding his own shame. This one matter, at least, was something that he could try to do something about.

"I hope there will be no trouble for him. I will admit that it has become more difficult recently, with the unrest on the streets, to stay beneath the scrutiny of the authorities."

Cosette caught her breath. She had no doubt surmised that Valjean's troubles stemmed from his connection with the revolutionaries, which was not untrue. 

The girl's distress moved him in an indefinable way; in the same way, he himself felt unaccountably perturbed at the thought of her father in the hands of the authorities.

His voice was not entirely steady as he said, "I cannot tell you about the past, Mademoiselle, but I can tell you this: I will do what I can to ensure your father sees no trouble with the authorities."

Cosette flushed again; this time, she dared put her free hand on his arm. "Thank you, Inspector. Truly, you are a good friend to Papa."

Javert began to demur, and then stopped himself; involuntarily, his steps slowed. A friend ought to have been more circumspect with Valjean's liberty. A friend would not have engaged in that stupid quarrel, or let Valjean call upon him at the Sûreté, or stoked the fires of the Prefect's suspicions at the St. Merry trial. 

What would happen if the Prefect now decided to look into Javert's affairs? Javert had deliberately omitted to mention in his 6 June report that the insurgent who had spared his life had later survived the barricade. Indeed, Javert might have given the Prefect reason to assume the contrary -- and he was prepared to tell the first lie of his life to protect Valjean -- but what if that did not stop Gisquet from making further enquiries?

Despair rising within him, he confessed, as much to himself as to Cosette: "In truth, I have not been any kind of friend to your father."

Their slower pace allowed Cosette to turn and stare at him. "Why, that's not so. You just told me that you would do your best to protect him..." Javert did not meet her eyes, and she continued, pointedly, "And I know Papa cares about you, also. He would not have been so upset with you otherwise."

Javert could not imagine that this was in any respect true. It was unthinkable; Valjean would have no earthly reason to care about the friendship of a man who had hunted him cruelly for years, who still regarded him as a criminal on probation. If he felt anything at all for Javert, it was likely the misplaced gratitude of a prisoner given a reprieve from incarceration, rather than the willing regard of a free man. 

He shook himself, and took up the pace again, briskly. "I think you may be mistaken as to how your father feels, Mademoiselle," he told her, looking straight ahead. "But that is of no consequence. I will help him, regardless, because that would be the right thing to do."

In that moment, Javert knew he was speaking the truth. He owed the debt of his life to Jean Valjean; it was imperative that he save the man from Gisquet and the weight of the Law, even if this meant saving him from Javert himself.

"I suppose that is the job of a policeman! To know what the right thing to do would be, and then to do it." Cosette tried to smile, and then she put her hand to her brow. 

Javert stopped in the street, frowning. "You are not ill?" 

Cosette shook her head. "No, no. It is just ... You remember we spoke about the sounds I can hear, the creaking, the crying? I told Papa about them, like you suggested, and he thought they were rather odd..." She closed her eyes, and held tightly to Javert's arm. 

"In any case, my sounds are getting worse. Particularly earlier today, when you and Marius were in my house. And just now, actually. I can suddenly hardly hear myself." 

They had come to a halt beside a brightly-lit cafe; under its light, Javert could see the pallor of her cheeks, the haunted look in her blue eyes. 

As the noises increased around him in turn, Javert wondered, a little desperately, whether the sounds that plagued Cosette now were the results of his past misdeeds. After all, Javert had driven Cosette's mother to her death and had ruined the life of Cosette's adopted father. Perhaps the ghosts of Javert's sins would have reason to haunt this poor girl, as well as to torment Javert himself. 

If indeed these spectral noises were caused by the ghosts of Javert's past sins, these would be enough to fill all of Paris with creaking and clanging and relentless water, for all the harm Javert had caused to so many.

And it was harm that seemed to be unabated, despite Javert's best efforts to now redeem himself. Desperate men were still being imprisoned, sons were being separated from their mothers -- and even Jean Valjean himself might be condemned by the very act of probation that Javert had tried to devise for him. 

"Maybe it will never be enough," Javert muttered. When Cosette frowned up at him in incomprehension, he realised he had spoken out loud.

"What do you mean, Monsieur?"

"It is nothing." With an effort, Javert took hold of himself, and offered Cosette his arm again. "You are unwell, we should see you home without further delay."

"You do not look well yourself. Is it your own noises? Monsieur, has something happened?" Cosette asked as they began to hasten down the street again, but Javert would not be detained. They turned the corner of Rue des Blancs Manteaux, and from there they approached the familiar doorstep of No. 7.

Cosette knocked for the portress, and then paused, blinking up at him in the dim light of Rue de l'Homme Armé.

"Inspector, I had thought to bring you some peace of mind by my apology and stories of my father, but instead I see I have caused you some distress instead. Can I help at all?"

Javert supposed he ought not be surprised that Valjean's daughter could tell something was amiss. He felt strangely both hot and cold at once, as if his soul was too large for his body and was at the same time entirely separated from it. The noises seemed to have taken up clamourous residence at the base of his skull.

"Do not trouble yourself on my account, Mademoiselle. I have promised that I will protect your father, regardless of the cost."

Cosette said something else in a trembling voice, but Javert had already turned away.

 

*

 

Night had now fallen; a cold night, with thick clouds that obscured the stars in the sky. Inspector Javert plunged into streets that were at once filled with silence as well as resounding, relentless noise.

His rapid steps were at first without direction, as if he hoped by sheer physical effort to outpace the ghostly pursuit.

As the night lengthened and he walked on, the provenance of the noises seemed to solidify around him – surrounding him with the creaking of Fantine's deathbed, the clanging of guns at the barricades of the Chanvrerie, the accusing drip of the blood that stained his hands. 

Eventually, his strides slowed and became a deliberate tread, as if his feet had uncovered a trail of footprints that led toward one given course.

In this way he found his old path to the Seine. He reached the Quai des Ormes, skirted the quay, passed the Grève, and halted at some distance from the post of the Place du Châtelet, at the angle of the Pont Notre-Dame. 

There, between the Pont Notre-Dame and the Pont au Change on the one hand, and the Quai de la Mégisserie and the Quai aux Fleurs on the other, was the point of the Seine which formed a lake even more dreaded by mariners in autumn than in summer. The cold water, driven by the massive water-pumps, rolled in vast and terrible waves visible from the surface, attacking the piles of the bridges effortfully, as if to pluck them, clanging and creaking, from the river-bed.

As he had done that summer night, when the revolution and catastrophe had overtaken him, Javert leaned both elbows on the parapet, his chin resting in both hands.

That night, surrounded by the broken ruin of Authority, he had stood upon this very place at the Quai des Gesvres, trying to discern the just and moral way forward. 

He had eventually chosen to reject the old path, the old life which would have meant seeking out Jean Valjean and restoring the convict to his unjustified imprisonment. In so rejecting that old path, he had been compelled to make an ending to his old life, in one way or another. 

That night, he had chosen to make an ending by seeking out this new path with the Sûreté. He had managed to convince himself that this was the best way to save Valjean, and to make reparation for his own sins. 

What if that had been a futile attempt? What if the noises were indeed being made by the ghosts of Javert's sins, to convince Javert of his pride and futility? What if Valjean could never have been saved by the pitiable efforts of a man who had never believed in atonement or in change? Javert had spent his entire life causing harm in the misguided pursuit of justice; it stood to reason that it might be impossible to stop. 

Even now, it seemed that the more he had sought to do the most moral thing, the more misery he seemed to inflict. Even the mercy he had imposed upon Valjean had just exposed Valjean to greater danger, and kept him a prisoner to Javert's whims.

It was pride that had made Javert believe he could change by sheer force of will sufficiently to atone for his misdeeds. Leaning upon the parapet, Javert shivered: such pride, in the heart of a sinner who had no basis for such belief, was a fatal sin. 

What if the ghostly noises were right? What if he was truly doomed, and could not help but destroy lives, as he had always done? As he had indeed done for decades, and was still doing, to Jean Valjean, who deserved to be free of him at last?

The autumn sky was black. A ceiling of clouds concealed the stars. The darkness was complete. The stones upon the deserted streets and quays creaked ominously even though no one was passing; the clanging bell tower of the Notre-Dame and the silent Palais de Justice seemed features of the night. The outlines of the bridges dripped formlessly in the mist, one behind the other. 

Below the parapet, all was dark. Nothing could be distinguished. The sound of the river filled the night, but the river itself could not be seen. What lay below was not water, it was an abyss.

What if the other ending was the only way Valjean could be saved, the only way for Javert to make recompense for his crimes?

The cacophony of the creaking and clanging and dripping was drowned out by the river's irresistible roar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While No. 7 Rue de L’Homme Armé didn’t exist, it’s generally agreed that No. 7 would have been on the corner of Rue de l’Homme Armé and Rue des Blancs Manteaux, as shown in the 1836 version of the Atlas General available [here](http://pudl.princeton.edu/boundart.php?obj=79407z45c).


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Javert takes the leap.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Revised chapter, which proceeds from the cliffhanger towards resolution!)
> 
> In this chapter: some old-fashioned gothic horror, which has caused an upgrade in rating to Teen & Up.

When the last light from the surrounding houses was extinguished, Javert took off his hat and climbed onto the parapet. 

Everything was clear at last. The relentless sounds had led him inexorably to this place: the Quai des Gesvres under a starless sky, on the edge of the abyss and the rushing river below. 

Javert could see nothing beneath the parapet under his feet. The path behind him was crowded with his past: the crimes and cruelties of decades, pale ghosts with accusing eyes. Ahead of him was no future but the one which he had stolen that summer night –- now, nothing but an endless darkness. 

He could see it so distinctly. All of Paris had been put out of joint that June night, when he had turned away from this path to the river, falsely convinced of his own strength and blinded by pride. 

Now the creaking stones, the clanging bells of Notre-Dame, the bridges dripping in the mist, these ghosts of the summer past, all spoke to him of one thing. 

These fateful sounds would not let him rest until he had restored this world to rights. Until he had made an ending.

Ears ringing, he readied himself to take that final step. 

  
  
  
  
 

And then, cutting across the cacophony of sounds, came a voice that spoke against it. 

"By God, Javert! Come down!"

Jean Valjean, emerging from the darkness, crossing the embankment toward him in a fierce blaze. His footfalls rang against the stones of the quay, as unerring as if the ghostly sounds had told him where Javert might be and aimed him like an arrow toward the river. His hat had come off, his coat was loose in the wind, his face was flushed a dark red under the white flag of his hair.

Javert felt the world shudder upon its very foundations, as if the ledge underneath his feet was about to give way. For an instant, it looked as if Valjean meant to grapple those burly arms about him and wrest him bodily off the parapet, but at the last moment he pulled into an abrupt halt alongside Javert.

Somehow, Javert caught his balance. He even managed to discover his voice. 

"How did you find me?"

Valjean leaned against the parapet in his turn; he was panting, taking in deep gulps of breath. His hair was in disarray, his cravat had come half-untied, his chest heaved with strain. 

In between gasps for air, he said, "Remember, you took me here that first day instead of arresting me? Cosette told me you were in some distress -– she was so worried about you –- and this was the one place I thought you might have gone."

He reached up cautiously to Javert, as if to a wild animal that would attack at any moment. His voice shook. "Please come down from there, for the love of God."

Javert looked down; the outstretched hand, the undisguised anguish in Valjean's eyes, gave him pause. Even though Valjean had been so angry with Javert, before, he had not hesitated to hurry here to the river in frantic search upon learning that Javert was in need. 

Perhaps Javert had not irretrievably damaged the friendship between them after all. 

Javert took a deep breath, and made himself speak calmly, as if he was not standing upon the precipice of his very life, and surrounded by ghostly sounds that urged him to end it. 

"Very well, then, you and Cosette were right. You may have raised a detective despite yourself! For it seems your Cosette has successfully resolved the mystery of the noises that fill my days."

Valjean swallowed, and then with an effort he, too, took hold of his composure. "Tell me," he said, carefully, making a placating gesture, as if he and Javert were having one of their customary afternoon conversations about morals and just men.

"It appears your daughter has also been troubled by those ghostly sounds," Javert said. He could barely recognise his own voice. If not for Valjean's intervention, he might already have been at the bottom of the river, and at peace. "And no wonder, since what is haunting us both may be the ghosts of my past misdeeds."

Valjean looked puzzled, and Javert tried to explain further. "It seems I ought to have died that night of the insurgency; I should have known I could not outrun my crimes. And because I did not admit my failures to myself, the ghosts of these old sins have haunted me ever since."

It seemed these ghosts of old sins were no longer silent in Valjean's presence; they filled the night with clanging and creaking and the beckoning river.

Valjean shook his head. "You believe you are being haunted by the ghosts of your past wrongs? That Cosette is being haunted by them, also?"

"Yes. Because I was prideful enough to think I could change." Javert watched his hands clench themselves into fists. "I know now that I cannot do enough, that no atonement I make now will ever be enough -- for what I did to Fantine, for what I have done to you."

Valjean looked as if he was about to gainsay this like the well-meaning martyr he was. To forestall him, Javert added, grimly, "And now I know that the way to truly be free of the noises is to do what I ought to have done that night."

Javert glanced down at the hungry gulf of the river, and then back at the man who was standing on the embankment at his side.

In the darkness, Valjean's face seemed drained of colour; his eyes had closed as if in horror, or in frantic prayer. 

When he opened them, his face was set in resolute lines. 

He put his hands upon the ledge, and in one swift motion he leaped up onto the parapet beside Javert.

Javert took an involuntary step away. He experienced a dizzying moment of disorientation, felt the world tilt under his feet -– and Valjean's powerful hand had clasped over his own, a steady anchor to the present.

"Listen to me. Seeking to destroy yourself is never an answer. It would be violence toward yourself and toward God, who has shown you such mercy -–" Valjean's voice trembled with something Javert knew he should be able to understand, had he not travelled so far from himself.

Valjean continued, "And it is untrue that you have not managed to atone for the past. Your position at the Sûreté has allowed you to continue with your police work while helping the needy; you have come to temper justice with mercy." He tried to smile, awkwardly. "There are gamins who have turned from petty crime, and young people who have found employment, because of Inspector Javert." He grew serious again: "Don't let these thoughts of ghosts make you throw away all the good work you've done."

Valjean's vehemence gave Javert pause. Had he, Javert, managed to do some good, after all, one reformed youngster at a time? He might not have been able to stop the prosecution of insurgents who had taken up arms against the state, but his intervention had permitted Charles Jeanne one last embrace with his mother to take with him into exile.

"This surely cannot be enough," Javert said at last. "After what I've done, what could I do that would be enough? Do not tell me that my debts can all be so easily repaid." 

Valjean's clasp was unaccountably warm. In the darkness of the quay, his eyes shone as if lit from within. 

He said, fervently, "Don't you see, Javert, you did what you thought was right at the time, you knew no better. But now you should know there is no question of debts or repayment. There is simply mercy, which cuts across everything: you are so much a better man for your mercy.”

He pressed Javert’s hand. “You showed mercy to Marius, and to me, and I know that God will be merciful to you."

Could this be true? Was there truly such mercy in the world, enough to break the cycle of harm that had existed between them for almost three decades? 

Valjean clenched his fingers around Javert's in a grip that was almost painful. His robust grasp conveyed in no uncertain terms that, should Javert choose now to leap, he would be taking Valjean with him over the edge as well.

He added with equanimity, "I am a fair swimmer, Inspector, but even I would not trust myself to prevail over this current. What I do trust, instead, is that you would be merciful enough not to risk us both."

"This makes no sense," Javert protested. "Have I not pursued you for long enough? Do you not desire to be free of me?"

Valjean took a deep breath, as if searching himself deeply. Then he said, "I do not, not any longer. In fact, I have not felt that desire for some time. Do not tell yourself that you can so easily be free of _me_."

Javert could not believe this. He had hunted Valjean for so long, had done him so much harm, surely Valjean would have every reason to wish for freedom? By God --

It was then that Javert suddenly realised they were not alone on the embankment.

Something was climbing out of the abyss, up the wall of the quay, soaked through from the river: a figure dressed in a black overcoat, wearing metal about its waist that clanged dreadfully against the stone. It hauled itself painfully onto the creaking parapet at Javert's feet, a sodden, heaving mass, dripping onto his boots like a torrential monsoon. 

Javert looked down into the blue, drowned face as if into a ghastly mirror, and he let out a cry. 

His legs could not hold him. If not for Valjean's grip, he would have toppled from the ledge into the deadly water. 

With a convulsive movement, Valjean hauled him back from the brink, backwards off the parapet. Together they collapsed upon the stones of the embankment.

"Oh God," Javert said. He struggled to his knees. He could not take his eyes from the thing that clung, dripping, to the ledge.

Valjean had also climbed to his knees; he held Javert's shoulders to steady him. "What is it? Tell me what you see."

Javert could not find the words. The dreadful, too-familiar figure was also silent. 

Eventually, he managed, "It is he who leaped that night. He haunts me with what I ought to have done. He tells me what I must now do."

The creaking, the clanging, those burning eyes...

"Look at me," Valjean said; he curved a hand against Javert's cheek and turned Javert's face forcibly to his. If he was surprised or shocked by Javert’s words, he did not show it; his regard was entirely focused on Javert’s. "You did not choose destruction that night as he did; you chose to live. Why not live now?"

Valjean's touch was rough but in no way cruel, his fingers calloused and warm against Javert's skin. Javert was compelled to meet the man's gaze, and saw it was alight now with the same fervour that had consumed Valjean that night of their argument. It was a gaze that Javert had not forgotten over the long years of twisted pursuit, a gaze that had over the last months become his entire world.

He found himself saying, painfully, "Why not? I have caused you enough harm in life, I had no right to keep hold of you as if you were my prisoner. I could never do enough, or be enough -- I had thought it better to end it, all of it, and then you might be free."

Valjean flinched as if Javert had struck him. Then his strong arms came up around Javert, and his voice shook with passion. 

"Never. Do not think it would be freeing me. I could not have borne it were you to have leaped."

To Javert's astonishment, the man had started to shiver, as if that powerful body might shake itself apart at any moment. Why, he seemed distraught over the notion that Javert might have chosen the path of destruction, like his analogue from the river. It was inexplicable. Valjean would no doubt feel guilt -- Javert knew the man was filled with an inexhaustible well of guilt -- but there seemed to also be something else there: the same intensity that had crackled between them when they had last faced off before Javert's fireplace.

Valjean said, thickly, "When Cosette told me you had come to visit her, and what you had said to her, about protecting me -- when it made me so afraid for you -- I think I knew it, then." 

He swallowed, and went on with difficulty. "Javert, please understand, I do not wish to be without you. If you had leaped tonight, sooner or later it would have ended me as well." 

His voice caught, he bent his head, he could not continue. 

Over Valjean's bowed head, Javert saw the spectral figure climb slowly down from the parapet and take to its knees beside him. Its dead face was sombre; its hooded eyes contained not the accusing rage Javert expected, but a deep regret. 

And underneath that drowned sorrow was a characteristic impatience that Javert was all too familiar with -- the annoyance which he experienced every time a suspect or a colleague had been particularly slow to reach an obvious deduction. 

The realisation spread through Javert like a kindled flame, slowly at first, and then like a torrent that filled his veins with fire. 

The dripping ghost of the inspector who knelt beside him now had not been trying to haunt him, but had been instead trying to _warn_ him. 

By God, what he had almost --

He stretched out a hand to touch Valjean's face, and felt a ghostly double of his hand mirror that movement, its sleeve dripping from the Seine.

He shivered, his world filled with echoes of clanking and creaking and eternal cold. Valjean lifted his chin, his grasp tightened, and the roughness of stubble under his fingers -- the fervour in Valjean's eyes, the passionate mouth turned towards to his -- all anchored Javert in the here and now: on the stones of the embankment, clasped in Valjean's arms, afraid and breathing, poised on the knife's edge between life and death. 

He said, the words first coming in painful drops and then in a flood, "I never imagined that you would want anything to do with me."

Valjean let out a harsh breath, in fear and relief both, and Javert kissed him for the first time, beside the parapet where he had twice tried and failed to make an ending. 

As the river roared below them, Valjean kissed him back, tentatively at first and then with a growing hunger that took him entirely by surprise. The blood pounding urgently in his veins, Javert felt the future unfurl before him like a slow tide; felt himself stir, once again, to life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My thanks to Miss M and Esteven, the latter who recommended [this painting from 1830 called “The Pont au Change and the Palais de Justice”](http://www.jean-baptiste-camille-corot.org/The-Pont-au-Change-and-the-Palais-de-Justice.html) (from the Quay des Gesvres) by Jean Baptiste Corot, which shows where Javert and Valjean would have stood in this chapter.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The truth, at last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More angst, now accompanied by the sort of activity that brings with it an increased Mature rating. (At least it's characterisation-driven mature activity?)

It was frigid and dark in Javert's apartment in Rue des Vertus. It was almost always so in the months following summer: the long hours in the office and the shortened Parisian days meant a customary return to a cold fireplace, the portress long gone to bed, and empty rooms, which had only of late been occupied by creaking echoes and a dripping, relentless loneliness. 

This solitary habit of decades had now been torn asunder in one night, by one man. 

Impossibly, Jean Valjean was standing in his arms, his powerful presence almost enough to set fire to the hearth and bring its darkness to roaring light. 

Even more impossibly, Valjean was permitting himself to be clasped as firmly as any vigilant policeman might wish -- a firm enough clasp to secure a criminal who had evaded the law for so long. Indeed, Valjean was shivering, doubtless because his own decades-long habits of flight were similarly not easy to set aside. 

And yet, despite those long years of fear and deprivation, Valjean endured his touch; clasped back, even, with the same strength that had set Javert at liberty at the barricades, that had rescued him from the river.

Jean Valjean was standing in his arms and receiving his kiss, accepting the embrace of a drowning man, and kissing him back. 

Trembling and incredulous, Javert might have believed himself at the bottom of the Seine. It was difficult to hear anything above the urgent sound of his own pulse; it seemed almost as preposterous to breathe as it would have been underwater. The room tilted precariously on its side, its familiar outlines made unreal by moonlight and shadow. There were outer garments and boots strewn upon the floor, damp as if from the riverbed. And Valjean's mouth was upon his, hot and sure, Valjean's arms about him, brawny chest pressed to his own so closely Javert could feel his pounding heart -- a miracle that Javert's wildest imaginings would never before have entertained, but one which seemed to be occurring nevertheless. 

It seemed as if, after a fashion, they had made their way over to Javert's narrow bed. In the struggle of their awkward embraces, they had even managed to unfasten waistcoats and loosen clothing, and most of Valjean's broad body had been uncovered by Javert's unsteady fingers: a burly expanse of breast and muscular thighs, weathered by the seasons of Paris, covered all over by a mat of wiry silver hair, and bearing the unmistakable scars of the bagne. 

The sight stopped Javert in his tracks. His legs could not hold him; he found himself upon his knees beside the bed.

Over the roar of blood in his ears, he heard himself repeat the despairing words he had spoken at the river.

"How could you want anything to do with me!"

"I don't know," Valjean said. He got to his knees beside Javert, grasping him by the shoulders, and stared fervently into Javert's eyes. "The same way you would wish to be with a convict. The same way you could see me as more than a convict."

The scars on his chest and shoulders gleamed faintly silver in the moonlight. His touch burned against Javert's upper arms; his eyes burned with emotion that Javert was only beginning to understand. 

Under Valjean's gaze, the world reeled from light to shade and then back again. Javert grasped Valjean's wrists, fingers closing over the marks left by Toulon's manacles. Slowly, he said, "You _are_ more than a convict. And I have done you enough harm, which is why I thought you would wish to be free." 

"I would have thought so, too, and yet I find now that is not what I wish. How strange this is," Valjean murmured. His mouth was very red from where Javert had kissed and had kept on kissing him; his chest was heaving with rapid breath. 

Slowly, he drew his hand from Javert's arm and placed it upon Javert's bare breast, above his frantic heart. "In fact, I find that what I now wish... and it is indeed very strange..." 

Words seemed to fail him; he bowed his white head, and a shudder ran through his body, urgent as fear and something which looked like more than fear. 

As if from within a dream, Javert saw the rapid flutter of pulse in the side of Valjean's neck, felt the rough pads of Valjean's fingers stroke against his own skin, watched a flush creep up into Valjean's chest and paint his weathered cheeks with colour. 

Belatedly, he recognised the same fervour which had suffused his own body, making his pulse pound and his breath come faster; a fervour that had taken hold of the guarded part of himself which the irreproachable policeman had always kept in check, and awakened him to desire. 

His blood was alive in his veins, his flesh had roused between his thighs as if he was a much younger man. He found himself absurdly unsteady in every limb. It was as if the bronze breast-plate of his chest had been cracked open, and his disobedient heart had been laid bare at last. 

For once, he did not need the drowned ghost of the past summer to tell him what it was that Valjean could not say.

"Come, then," he said, and raised Valjean from his knees, and drew him into his bed. 

 

* 

 

He did not understand any of it. How could this be what Valjean truly wished, in any iteration of the world? 

The mild, saintly man who had convinced him that criminals could be redeemed, who had by slow increments convicted him of his own wrongdoing, would surely have been above such base physical desires. The determined fugitive who had fled from Javert for decades would have every reason to fear and loathe him. 

And yet, in this particular world, it seemed this was indeed what Jean Valjean wished. 

The evidence was inescapable -- an urgent clasp, the ardent slide of Valjean's mouth against his, the erection that jutted unmistakably underneath Valjean's small clothes. It appeared Valjean was not able to formulate words of attestation, but the inarticulate sounds that he made, so eloquent with need, were proof enough of what he desired. 

And so, miraculously, this was a world in which his one-time prisoner would freely lie down with him and embrace him unstintingly, a world in which the fugitive he had hunted would permit him to strip the last garments from the muscular body and caress the silver scars left by the bagne. A world in which his good and godly benefactor would press himself between Javert's thighs with increasing fervour, groaning wordlessly as if his own wantonness was taking him by surprise.

It was taking Javert by surprise, also. The act of love was strange to him, in this world as well as all worlds he could conceive of. He had never so embraced any living soul, never held another in his arms and received their kisses and welcomed their desire. It was surreal and overwhelming and terrifying, akin to being set ablaze, or falling headlong into the abyss. He was a man whose world was built upon tenets of implacable will; never had he been as far from control over his body, or his once stoic heart.

It was too much. He was plummeting from a great height, he feared he was suffocating. He closed his eyes; it brought back the creaking dark, the roaring river, and in self-preservation he opened them again. 

It seemed there was no hiding from the inescapable fact of Jean Valjean in his bed, in this or any other world.

He kissed Jean Valjean on the mouth, he drank down Valjean's guttural, involuntary sounds like he was dying of thirst; he clasped Valjean's ruddy, leaking prick and permitted Valjean to push him into the thin mattress and rub that impossibly unclothed body against every inch of Javert's own and thrust desperately against his grasp. He let Valjean meet his every desire with a gasping, shivering desire of his own, could do nothing save hold on, disbelieving and thrilled and terrified at once. 

Valjean broke the kiss and put his head back, and Javert realised the man had mustered words after all, that he was praying, _God have mercy, what are we doing_ ; words torn from him like a violation. 

_What are we doing_ , but also, _yes, God help us, yes._

Javert grasped the nape of Valjean's neck to steady him, hoping honesty would steady them both. "I don't know. Valjean, I've never, I hardly know how to do this."

Valjean let out a harsh sound that was almost a sob. Javert knew the man must be even more terrified than Javert himself was. In no world could he ever have imagined that his grim, relentless hunter would have welcomed him into his bed, and more, that he would have himself so willingly surrendered. 

But this was the world that Javert's strange, drowned ghost had led them to; a world and a future they had both chosen to make together.

"I have you," he told Valjean. "I'm here."

In another world this would have been the ultimate horror, the terrifying end of the chase. But in this world, these words made Valjean's eyes soften with dangerous trust.

"I know. I know, God help us both."

He fastened his hands upon Javert's shoulders and began to rock himself between Javert's thighs, his bare prick hot and heavy against Javert's own erection. It was too much, and not enough; Javert felt himself arching his back and spreading his legs for Valjean, his eyes sliding shut of their own volition. 

They rocked together, harder and faster, Valjean's breath coming in great gulps, the burly, powerful body losing control. He moaned and trembled in Javert’s arms as if he was weak and finally beyond speech and coming apart at every seam. 

Too much, and not nearly enough: Javert was unravelling as well, drowning upon dry land. He heard himself make a broken sound and knew he was rapidly approaching the precipice of himself, hurtling towards the edge, and the terror and the ecstasy that lay beyond it.

This time he did not hesitate. He embraced his new future as unsparingly as he embraced the man in his bed; with a great, shuddering cry, he cast himself off the ledge, and into the abyss.

He leaped, and instead of falling, he found himself caught, and lifted to safety: in this world, and the next, and the next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Miss M and esteven for their patience and speedy beta!


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More truths.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to Miss M and esteven for the beta, and everyone else for their patience! Two more chapters to go!

Javert awakened by increments. It was as if he was rising slowly through the waters of the open sea, drifting gradually upwards from the ocean's depths to the sun-dappled surface. 

His limbs felt heavy as he returned to himself, filled with a lassitude that was so foreign to him he could not immediately identify it as pleasure.

He cracked open his eyes. The morning was unseasonally warm. The dawn cast its light through the small window, flooding the room with what seemed like the last gold of the summer.

All around him was blessed silence: nothing creaked, nothing clanged, there was no ghostly past self standing in the shadows to warn him, dripping water from the Seine. 

The ghosts might finally have left him alone. But on this November morning, he was most certainly not alone.

So improbably that Javert might well have still been asleep, Jean Valjean lay beside him, almost too broad for Javert's austere bed. 

The sunlight slid across his unclothed body, across the ropes of muscle and thick mat of hair that curled upon his breast and belly and down to where the sheet covered him. The scars made by iron manacles and insistent punishment, hidden from all the world for decades, were now on open display. 

One brawny arm had passed itself across Javert's shoulder in sleep, a reminder of last night's revelations.

As Javert watched, Valjean too came awake, blinking himself alert within moments, in what was no doubt the habit of a fugitive who had been too long on the run. Javert saw a flicker of doubt cross that venerable face and experienced an excruciating chill; then Valjean smiled his faint, wry smile, and tightened his arm around Javert in an awkward embrace. 

"This is as strange to me as it was last night. Stranger, if that were possible."

Javert closed his eyes in relief. He did not know if he expected Valjean to leap up in horror, or flee naked from Javert's bed, because his ability to anticipate Valjean's actions, and indeed to experience all rational thought itself, seemed to have ended last night on the banks of the Seine. 

"You are still here!" he said, and then grimaced. Granted, this was the first time Inspector Javert had been obliged to have such a conversation as this, but even he was aware that this was not the sort of thing one was expected to say to a bedfellow in the morning after. 

Fortunately, Valjean did not appear to have many expectations in that regard, either. He sat up in bed and put his hand on Javert's chest almost tentatively, as if he, too, could scarcely believe what had passed between them.

"It seems I am, indeed," he said, slowly. "After years of wishing to be free of you, I find myself wanting to stay."

"How is this possible?" Javert muttered. "I have done you nothing but harm." Again, this seemed an inopportune time for such a remark, but he needed to understand the cataclysm that had ripped his world from its moorings, bringing about this new, shining, inexplicable reality.

Valjean said, "You were just doing your duty. You must know I never felt the need to forgive you, for any of it."

Javert shook his head. "I know. It is inexplicable... And yet I placed you on parole, I made you account to me as if you were truly still a convict. You were angry, and you were right to be."

"I _was_ angry!" Valjean let out a huff of self-deprecating laughter. "And it seems I was angry because I wanted you to see me as more than just the convict." 

Valjean stroked Javert's chest, diffidently, in a gesture that seemed at once a nervous twitch and one intended to soothe. For some reason, the warm, calloused touch of Valjean's fingers had the opposite effect, and Javert became aware of an unaccountable stirring between his own thighs beneath the covering sheet. He swallowed: it would not do to indulge in these new, wanton desires, not when there were important revelations to be made.

"I _did_ see you as more than that," he said. "I may have always done so, even before the barricades, even though I could not admit it to myself." 

Cold washed over him, despite the morning's warmth. If he had not heeded the ghost of the Inspector who had leaped that summer, he might even now have been at the bottom of the Seine. 

"I was an idiot," he murmured. "I ought to resign from policing for all the use I have been. All the clues were there, all the evidence led to one thing, and like an amateur I allowed my own biases to lead me in the opposite direction."

Valjean kept rubbing his chest in that soothing, infernal manner. "You cannot blame yourself," he said. "Your duties were your whole world, and you saw that world destroyed. It is not easy to put off the habits, or the guilt, of a lifetime! I know how difficult it has been for me, at any rate... I have never known what it was like to have friendship, and then lose it -- which is why, I think, it took as long as it had for me to realise how I felt." 

The confession made him colour slightly, but he did not look away. "In any case, I finally realised that you needed me, and I came. Thank God I realised it in time."

Javert felt a difficulty in his chest, as if something had clenched itself around his disobedient heart. It was suddenly very hard to catch his breath. He clasped Valjean's hand, and had to wait until his voice was steady. 

"You are not wrong. Truly, my duties were my entire world; as, in some strange way, were you. It was always you, Valjean. Thank God I realised it in time, also."

He found himself reaching up as if he had the right to do so. Valjean's lips were rough from the weather and tasted sour from sleep, and yet Javert did not know what other kiss could be more compelling than this one, from a man who had every reason to hate him and who had chosen to embrace him instead. He realised belatedly, also, that kisses and romantic words probably featured in most morning-after conversations. At least it was better to arrive at this discovery late than to have never realised it at all.

"Perhaps we were both less than competent," Valjean murmured, smiling slightly against Javert's mouth. "Perhaps this is why the ghost of your past self felt it needful to haunt you, until you finally unearthed the truth for yourself."

Javert snorted. "I cannot be the only obtuse person in Paris in need of haunting --" and then he pulled away as a new realisation washed over him. 

" _Cosette_ ," he said, as he looked into Valjean's uncomprehending eyes.

 

 

Javert had not initially believed he had in his turn caused an equal affliction to Valjean's own world as Valjean had wrought upon his, but he believed it now.

For it would have taken nothing less than a complete upheaval to distract Valjean from considerations of his daughter, whom he had left alone the previous night in order to search for one desperate policeman, and to whom he had not returned.

"Oh God, she must be frantic," Valjean muttered. He had leaped up from the bed, almost displacing Javert from under the sheets, and started to throw his clothes on with hands that were not entirely steady. 

"I am sure she will know not to worry about you. You are not a child," Javert said, but Valjean did not look at all convinced.

Javert began to dress as well. He was acutely aware of the night's exertions clinging to his own skin, but he was unsure of how anyone performed their morning ablutions in the presence of a partner, and he was not going to start in front of Jean Valjean.

He reached for the City uniform which he had donned during the trial. Fastening the brass buttons steadied him, made him feel once more in charge of himself, as if the navy wool and severe epaulettes and polished black boots were armour.

Valjean glanced across as he secured his cravat, and his eyes crinkled in recognition. "I don't think Cosette has seen you in uniform," he said.

"We wore this for the St. Merry trial, to reassure the populace." Even as Javert made those remarks, he grimaced internally over how patronising they sounded. This lofty and supercilious tone of authority had been ingrained over years of policing; he would need to do far more work to break the habit of decades. 

Valjean began to pull on his greatcoat. "I do not believe Cosette has had the time to attend the trial. She has been far too busy with plans for the wedding."

"Is it not too early to plan for such things?" Javert muttered, shouldering his own coat. "Is the event not in the next year?" 

Valjean paused. "It seems it is already very late to start in planning," he remarked, in a tone that had changed and which Javert did not immediately recognise. 

When he did recognise it, he had to pause as well. "Valjean, about the wedding ..."

Valjean shook his head. "I know what you are going to say," he said, taking up his hat. "Let us not speak of it now. We should be letting Cosette know that I am well, that we both are, that nothing untoward occurred last night..." 

His voice trailed off. His eyes widened, staring at an unfocused point in the distance, and he caught his breath sharply.

"Do you hear that?" he asked, in a voice that shook. 

Javert caught him by the shoulders. The powerful body was trembling under his hands, like a rabbit caught in a snare.

He could not remember ever touching anyone to comfort them before; it was strange when Cosette had sought to do it and even stranger when he attempted the same with Cosette's father -- rubbing Valjean's shoulders, making himself speak as calmly and as gently as he could. 

"No. Tell me what you hear, Valjean."

Valjean's ruddy face had gone bone-white. "There is a thudding noise," he said, "and then a soft creaking, and the sound of someone crying. I feel as if I know that sound."

Javert stood stock-still. The thudding, the creaking, the crying... these sounded as if they emanated from ghosts that were _different_ from the drowned Inspector who had sought to warn him. These ghosts had not plagued him, but someone else.

Holding Valjean in his arms, Javert said, grimly, "I do not hear it, but I believe I know someone else who does."


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The mystery of the second ghost.

It was a short distance to Rue de l'Homme-Armé, but Valjean was in no state to walk. Javert hailed a fiacre and assisted his friend into it. 

Valjean's pallor was obvious even in the dim carriage interior. There was an unfocused look in his eyes, as if his gaze was fixed on something beyond this world that only he could see. His powerful body leaned against Javert's as if it had suddenly grown infirm -- a far cry from the passionate night before that they had shared, when he had handily proved to be as strong and vital as a man half his age.

Javert did not immediately recognise the tightness in his own chest as fear. Before this business with the ghosts, he could not remember the last time he had felt fearful -- as a child, perhaps, making his way through the gutters of Hyères, or before that, when his mother had left him? Certainly not during his time at Toulon or his lengthy career on the police force, when he had been known for his stoicism and fearlessness. In fact, he had been so resolute in his refusal to acknowledge any such weakness, that when he had first started hearing the noises, he remembered feeling annoyed rather than afraid.

But watching the drowned ghost of his past self pull itself from the Seine, he had been filled with unprecedented, undeniable terror. And now, unable to help Valjean or ease his suffering, Javert felt wretched and helpless: afraid in a way he had never felt on behalf of any living soul.

He clasped Valjean's hand, hoping this gave some measure of comfort. "Don't worry," he said. "We'll be there soon."

"I can't believe I left her alone," Valjean muttered. His lips were barely moving. "How could I have forgotten? She was my entire life."

"She still is," Javert said, reassuringly, and then, because he could not be other than that which he was, "and she's now grown and will soon be wed. I have no experience with children and weddings, but I believe that's how it should be: they grow up and get married, and have other things to concern them with."

Valjean lowered his face into his free hand. Javert knew he could not understand the depths of Valjean's distress -- he felt another jolt of that emotion he now knew to be fear --

\-- and the carriage rattled to a halt. "Rue de l'Homme-Armé," the driver announced.

Javert paid the man, and helped Valjean out of the fiacre. 

They made an unlikely pair, standing in the light of the morning on the doorstep of No. 7. Roused by Javert's knocking, the portress let them in, trying not to stare at Javert's City uniform. 

Grimly, Javert managed to wrestle Valjean up the stairs, and hammered upon the Fauchelevents' door.

After some long minutes of banging, the door was eventually opened by Marius Pontmercy.

The boy was as pale and shaking as Valjean himself. He gaped at Javert as if he was also seeing a ghost. 

"M. l'Inspecteur, it is you --!"

"Let us in," Javert said. "M. Fauchelevent is not well. Is Mademoiselle at home?"

"My father is not well? My father is here!" cried Cosette, in a strange, high-pitched voice. Javert pushed past Marius to enter the living room, Valjean at his side.

The room was brightly lit by the morning sun that streamed from the window. Cosette was on her knees upon the floor. She was staring fixedly at the old armchair that had been pulled up beside the fireplace, alongside a table that bore a pen, some ink, and a sheaf of writing paper.

Javert could not see anyone seated in the chair. But from the choking sound that Valjean made, it was clear that he could. 

"Angels have charge over us," his friend murmured, swaying upon his feet. Javert caught Valjean around the waist and took the man's weight in his arms.

Urgently, to Cosette, Javert said, "Tell us what you see."

The girl was silent, and Marius hastened from the door back to her side. He wrung his hands as he addressed Javert. "Monsieur, Toussaint came to fetch me at daybreak because she discovered Cosette in this way, collapsed upon the floor in the living room, staring at nothing and addressing the air. And since I arrived, Cosette will not tell me what is wrong, or what it is that she sees..."

"She will tell her father," Javert said, and assisted Valjean to his knees on Cosette's other side. 

Valjean put out an arm, and Cosette clung to it; she turned to him, staring as if she was returning to her senses for the first time.

"Father, are you here? Is it really you?"

He petted her hair as if she was still a little girl. "It is, my dear."

She made a fist in his sleeve. "Then who is it that sits in the chair, so thin and old, who will not speak, but weeps incessantly...?"

Valjean swallowed, turning his gaze to the unseen person who occupied the armchair beside the fire, beside the table with the ink and paper. Javert could not discern this particular ghost with his own eyes, but thanks to his own experiences, he was reluctantly willing to accept that it was there.

"It is my ghost," Valjean said, slowly. "The ghost of a self who chose, in another life, to die."

"But why?" Cosette demanded. "What reason would that other you have to choose death for himself? What reason would he have to weep so bitterly in this way, to decide to starve himself to death? Look at the poor dear thing, he is wasted away to nothing but skin and bone!" 

Valjean bowed his head; he clearly did not know how to respond to her, or to indeed understand the real import of this ghost of his other self. 

Javert, however, did. Being haunted all summer by a trenchant ghost of his own past self had clearly made him attuned to the ways of such creatures from another world. His new fear for Valjean made him even more acerbic than usual. He addressed Cosette: "Why, out of love for you, of course."

"Love? For me?" Cosette glanced uncomprehendingly at him from over Valjean's shoulder.

"Yes, Mademoiselle. Your father is so good, and thinks so little of himself, he feels he does not deserve your love." Javert glared at the chair, at the ghost-Valjean he could not see. "And in another life, he has clearly starved himself to death in order to convince himself of it."

Valjean made a small, hunted sound, but Javert held fast to his other arm; this was undoubtedly not an easy thing for Valjean to hear, but that did not make it any less true. 

Cosette said, slowly, "I do not understand. Papa, why do you feel you do not deserve my love?" 

And here it was, the point upon which everything hinged. This was the path Valjean could have chosen, this was the ending Valjean could have embraced, embodied here in this armchair before the fire, in the form of another ghost who had come to warn them of the decisions that had been taken in another life.

Valjean let out a shuddering breath. 

"Because in truth I do not deserve it," he said, at last. "Because I am no father to you. Because I am a criminal and a thief who served nineteen years in the bagne, and an escaped prisoner who has been on the run for ten years, and I am unworthy of your kindness."

There were tears on his cheeks now, as there were on Cosette's. She waited until he was done, and then she put out her hands and parted his white hair and kissed his brow.

"I know," she said, "that you are not my birth father. What of it? You have raised me like one, I owe everything I have to you, no daughter could love a father any more. About the prison, I confess I may have surmised this too -- after all, you are clearly not a police spy, and what other reason would you have to have known a policeman so intimately and for such a long time?"

Javert shook his head in disbelief, but Cosette was not finished.

"And the last, that you do not deserve my love or kindness? It will never be true, because you are deserving of all love -- of mine, and Marius', and the Inspector's as well, and none of us will let you waste yourself away believing otherwise." 

Valjean bent his head. His tears fell onto Cosette's bodice like autumn rain; his words came from a lifetime of self-deprivation and regret. 

"Child, you do not know what you speak of. My past life, as a criminal: how can it be anything but shameful? I have been running from the law for the last twenty years. I told myself that once I saw you married, I would be able to stop running. I had never thought ever to tell you of my past -- I knew it would be an eternal stain on your happiness."

"I don't care about your past. I will say that to you every day until you finally believe it. And besides, how would you starving yourself to death make me happy?" Cosette pointed a shaking finger at the armchair. "Papa, surely you can see that: this poor ghost is here to make sure you do not do the same thing that he chose to do -- to me and to yourself."

Valjean took her white hands in his and bent over them. Javert had not known if he could have better persuaded Valjean, not even after the night they had shared, but Cosette, the fierce daughter of Valjean's heart, would not be refused.

"Promise me that you will live," she admonished, and Valjean smiled through his tears and said, "Then it seems I must."

Father and daughter both reacted at the same time, recoiling in surprise from something that neither Javert nor Marius could see. Instinctively, Cosette clung to Marius, and Javert felt an unaccountable pang in his own chest when he realised Valjean had reached out to take his, Javert's, hand.

The chair was moving, almost imperceptibly, in the way it would shift if the ghost of a tired old man, worn out by grief and secrets, rose from it. 

The floorboards creaked as if that old ghost had paused to bow to them, and then taken his quiet leave.

Valjean shivered in Javert's arms. Javert felt his friend's broad body sag as if from the enormity of the decision he had made -- a decision no less weighty than the decision Javert himself had made, standing on the edge of the parapet of the Quai de Gesvres and upon the precipice of his very self. 

So it would seem that these ghosts of summer had come to warn them about treading the same paths the ghosts had taken: the paths that had led away from the world and all they had cared for, paths that had led to a quick end in the waters of the Seine for one, and a slow one, in an armchair before the fire and in heartbreak, for the other.

Instead, this was the path they had chosen now -- with a promise made to a daughter, with the clasp of a lover's hand -- a choice to do away with secrets, a choice to love, and to live again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta, as always, by the incomparable Miss M and Esteven <3


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The ghosts finally take their leave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So many beta thanks to Miss M and Esteven -- for sentences and structure, maps and meta, and your support, always! And to all of you (esp The_Plaid_Slytherin!) for reading ♥

The Sunday morning was crisp and cold. The church bells of the Cathédrale Notre-Dame tolled slowly in the distance, summoning the faithful into the presence of God and calling upon them to be of service. 

Once again, Javert had occasion to linger at the Quai des Gesvres. He leaned his arms against the very ledge upon which he had stood scant weeks before, when he had stared down into the abyss a second time and contemplated making an ending. It seemed as if that night had occurred a lifetime ago, and to another man. 

The river seemed calmer today, almost peaceful under the November sky. In much the same way, this mild morning was nothing like that turbulent, humid midnight in June when the world had spun off its foundations, giving birth to ghosts that had haunted the streets of Paris all summer long.

Standing here on the quiet quay, Javert could barely believe that this had been the place where the ghost of his former self had crossed from the other side of death to bring him a warning -- the place where he had allowed Valjean to rescue him after all, from death, and a fate worse than death.

"Do you still think about it?" Cosette asked, at his elbow.

Valjean's daughter stood at his side, leaning as he did against the parapet, pristine in her winter coat and hat. She too had been visited by a ghost which had travelled from another world to bring a warning. And with no help from anyone, this girl had embraced that warning more bravely than anyone could have expected; in the end, she had been the one to rescue Jean Valjean. 

Javert cleared his throat. "I confess that I do," he said. 

In truth, now the ghosts had released him, he thought about them all the time -- about the other self that had chosen to die rather than to live with the complexities of mercy; the other Valjean who had not dared to trust in his daughter’s love. He could almost see them now, standing on the Pont au Change in the clothes they had worn when they had died, one gaunt from loneliness and heartbreak, the other dripping from the Seine. 

"You must tell me everything," Cosette said. She glared across the river as if she, too, could see the other Valjean's haggard countenance, could see the other Javert blue and drowned beside him. "Papa has told me about my mother, but I want to know about those years you and Papa spent in Montreuil, and before, in Toulon; about what happened on the barricades; about how those ghosts came to die."

Of course she deserved to know it all. Javert said, slowly, "Some things are for your father to tell. But if I can help, I will."

"Thank you, Monsieur." Cosette turned to look at him, her young face drawn in hesitant lines. "Will there be further trouble, do you think?"

"For your father, for Marius?" Javert tried to recollect the fear that had originally driven him to the river, and discovered it had been replaced by an iron certitude. "Not while I still live."

Cosette smiled, as if she could see something in Javert's face that he did not know was there. "You intend to stay with the police, M. l'Inspecteur? You will continue your duties at the Prefecture?"

Javert grimaced. Matters had become difficult for Vidocq since the trial, as the man had himself predicted. True to form, the Chief had again thrown in his resignation, pre-empting the axe from Gisquet, and now the Sûreté itself would also be disbanded.

"I intend to stay." Javert would do his duty, and the justice he would try to achieve at the Prefecture would be tempered by the mercy he had learned from the trial of Charles Jeanne, the mercy that he had received at the river in the arms of Jean Valjean.

Even more hesitantly, Cosette said, "And you will also stay with my father?"

Javert looked steadfastly out at the river, but her innocent question had made him flush to his hat-line. 

Surely, Cosette would not imagine that her father's old friend and new companion also now shared his bed. That, on most evenings after Javert returned from the bureau, they would pass the night in Javert's humble apartment in Rue des Vertus in a passionate embrace; that they would wake the next morning and embrace yet again, like lovers in the first flush of youth. Valjean's daughter would not have accounted for her father's finding love at this late stage in his life; Javert himself could barely believe it was true. 

But impossible as it seemed, in this surprising new world he was now sharing his nights with Jean Valjean, and his solitary life had been torn from its very foundations and made anew. 

"Yes. I will stay. As long as your father will have me."

Cosette mused, "I wish for him to move with me, to live at Filles-du-Calvaire, but I think he may prefer something else? He said something about resuming the lease on the house at Rue Plumet. It is far too big for one person, but would not be for two... And I will not mind it, as long as you look after him, Monsieur."

She fixed him with a look that might not be entirely innocent. Javert frowned. Perhaps this young girl was not completely naive; after all, who better than a daughter to know her father's heart?

"Mademoiselle, you may entrust me. I will not fail him in this, either."

Cosette nodded seriously, and they both fell silent. The church bells continued to toll in the distance, a reminder of the pull of the world, of service and duty. Javert knew Valjean and Marius would be waiting for them, together with the Almighty, on the other side of the river.

Finally Cosette spoke again. "Do you think on what might have happened, had the ghosts not come to us?"

Javert gazed across the Seine to the Pont au Change. And then, with a jolt, he recognised two figures who were in fact standing there: pale and wan under the morning sun, wearing the clothes they had worn when they had died, the other Valjean's threadbare frock coat hanging loosely upon his almost-skeletal frame, the dead Inspector sodden and hatless, lips blue from the river. 

The ghosts were no longer terrifying to Javert. Instead, looking upon those dead faces, Javert felt immense gratitude, and, at the same time, a new and even more immense pity.

"If the ghosts had not come? Likely what had happened to them would have also happened to your father, and to me."

Cosette said, clasping her hands together impulsively, "The poor dears, they must have been heartbroken. And then, so brave, and so good of them to have travelled all this way, to save us from the same fate as they suffered!"

The other Valjean gazed at the daughter he had loved so deeply, with an obvious mixture of grief and longing. Witnessing this, Javert experienced a tightness in his throat. It was a physical pain to look upon that beloved face and see it bear the pallor of misery and death, to know that in another world the good man Javert had finally come to cherish had gone to his grave because there had been no one to convince him he deserved to be loved.

Cosette asked, "Do you think they know? That their mission succeeded, that you and Papa are alive because of them?"

"Perhaps." The drowned Inspector had stared at him impatiently that night, but with a depth of compassion; the other Valjean, it seemed, had reacted with sorrow and joy when Cosette had embraced her father. Surely they would realise, in some way, that their warnings had helped the Javert and Valjean of this world decide to live?

"And if that's so, perhaps they might themselves find some peace at last?" 

Javert looked across the river at the haggard figure of the other Valjean, at the dripping ghost of the drowned Inspector. They had not quite linked their arms, but they stood very close to each other, side by side -- in a way that they had never done in life, when they had been fugitive and policeman, hunter and prey. Their edges began to blur in the daylight, the images becoming indistinct and then vanishing into the morning air.

Javert raised his hand to his hat to them, and the ghostly Inspector mirrored the gesture, touching a transparent finger to his missing brim. 

As they faded from view, the ghost of a smile crossed Valjean's gaunt face, perhaps in acknowledgement that his own ending would now not come to pass in this world, and the other Javert reached, quite distinctly, for his hand. 

For a moment, Javert could not speak. When he regained his voice, he said, "Mademoiselle, I pray that might be so."

He held out his arm, and Cosette took it. 

Together, they began to walk back along the quay, toward Marius, and Valjean, and the rest of their lives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Vidocq resigned on November 15th, 1832, for the second time (the first time was in 1827); on that day the Sûreté was disbanded, as detailed [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A8ne_Fran%C3%A7ois_Vidocq#The_S.C3.BBret.C3.A9_.281811.E2.80.931832.29) and [here](http://www.sfhp.fr/index.php?post/2015/01/24/Notice-biographique-Pierre-Allard).

**Author's Note:**

> The RL [St. Merry Twenty-Two](http://chanvrerie.net/history/saint-merry/premiere-audience/) were first brought to trial (see the _Procès des vingt-deux accusés du Cloître Saint-Méry_ ) before the Court of Assizes of the Seine in October 1832. The verdict (where 14 out of the 22 defendants were acquitted) [was delivered](http://chanvrerie.net/history/revolutionaries/5-6-june-1832/) on All Hallows' Day, 31 October.  
>  

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Cover Art] for "The Ghosts of Summer" by iberiandoctor (jehane 18)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11793930) by [Hamstermoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hamstermoon/pseuds/Hamstermoon)




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